MediaFuturist: Futurists

New video: about being a Futurist, the future of education (Interview)

Uploaded by SaladaCorporativa on Dec 15, 2011 (note: these interviews are in English)

Video em inglês. Nesse vídeo Gerd Leonhard, autor, palestrante, CEO da The Future Agency e Professor convidado da Fundação Dom Cabral fala sobre o que o é um futurista, a carreira e a profissão de um futurista e tendências para a educação no mundo.

Posted by Gerd Leonhard at 3:18 PM in 21st Century Content Ecology, Conferences, Consumer Insights, Education, Futurism, Futurists, Interviews, VIDEO BLOG, Youtube | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Must watch video: Kevin Kelly on Attention Flows: The Future of the Digital Media Landscape.

This video says it all - 5* brilliant, MUST WATCH.

Posted by Gerd Leonhard at 12:05 PM in Future of Broadcasting, Future of Content, Future of Media, Futurists, Inspiring, Interesting, Made me think, Must-watch, Networked Society, Politics of Content, Resources, Smart People, Videos I Like | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Video conversation with fellow futurist Ross Dawson: what is the role of a futurist?

... Looking beyond the obvious:) From Ross' blog-post on this:

Here are a few of the topics we discuss:

* A key role of futurists is to develop and share foresights
* Someone who helps people think about the future to make better decisions today
* To examine and distinguish between trends and uncertainties in order to work out the best path forward
* Clients are interested in having help thinking about things they don’t have time to think about
* It is not a luxury but a necessity to think about the future, but it is useful to get help doing that from people who spend all their time doing that
* Going beyond the obvious is a special skill, but it is also about drawing out the implications of the obvious
* Stepping outside of beliefs and orthodoxies can be more easily done from outside organizations
* While some companies have resident futurists it is highly valuable to bring in people who can be disrespectful and challenge internal thinking
* Being a ‘provocateur’ means provoking not just thoughts but sometimes emotions

Watch the rest of the videos on Ross' Youtube channel or on GerdTube.

Follow Ross on Twitter, or Gerd. Visit The Futures Agency's website.

Posted by Gerd Leonhard at 9:05 AM in Bottom Lines, Branding, Futerati, Future of Business, Future Watch, Futurism, Futurists, The Futures Agency, VIDEO BLOG, Videos I Like | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

New video: conversation with fellow futurist Ross Dawson: The Future of Music

Yeah, I know... just can't see to get away from the digital music stuff:) But this is quite good and succinct so... spend the 7 minutes:)

I did a whole series of videos with Ross Dawson on my last trip to Sydney - be sure to follow him on Twitter and Youtube to get the latest updates.

Posted by Gerd Leonhard at 5:31 PM in 21st Century Content Ecology, Consumer Insights, Cultural Industries, Digital Music, Eoc: Music Industry, For Musicians, Future of Music, Futurists, Music, Music 2.0, Music Flat Rate, Music Like Water, Music Recognition, Music2.0 Book, Musician 2.0, Must-watch, Resources, Spotify, The Futures Agency, VIDEO BLOG, Videos I Like | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

The Wikileads debate: Jaron Lanier's TheAtlantic piece (and some responses)

Recently, I have been thinking a lot about what my position on Wikileaks i.e. Cablegate should be. Some of the best - and also most thought-provoking - insights have come from a recent, hotly contested piece on TheAtlantic.com, written by computer scientist, virtual reality pioneer and musician Jaron Lanier (who I have met once or twice in the past).

I am not sure I agree with everything that Jaron says (in fact, I don't - I hope to publish my own take on these issues soon) but he makes some very valid points about openness and the future of the Internet that I think really merit our consideration and made me think, so I figured I should share them with you (all snippets are quotes from his piece, highlights are mine):

"The Internet can and must be redesigned to reflect a more moderate and realistically human-centered philosophy...openness in itself, as the prime driver of events, doesn't lead to achievement or creativity.
A sufficiently copious flood of data creates an illusion of omniscience, and that illusion can make you stupid. Another way to put this is that a lot of information made available over the internet encourages players to think as if they had a God's eye view, looking down on the whole system.
To me, both right wing extremist leaks and Wikileaks are for the most part resurrections of old-fashioned vigilantism...vigilantism has always eroded trust and civility, but what's new online is the sterile imprimatur of a digital ideology that claims to offer automatic betterment. But if there's one lesson of history, it is that seeking power doesn't change the world. You need to change yourself along with the world. Civil disobedience is a spiritual discipline as much as anything else.
You need to have a private sphere to be a person, or for that matter for anything creative to happen in any domain. This is the principle I described as "encapsulation" in You Are Not a Gadget.
Imagine openness extrapolated to an extreme. What if we come to be able to read each other's thoughts? Then there would be no thoughts. Your head has to be different from mine if you are to be a person with something to say to me.
I used to think that an open world would favor the honest and the true, and disfavor the schemers and the scammers. In moderation this idea has some value, but if privacy were to be vanquished, people would initially become dull, then incompetent, and then cease to exist. Hidden in the idea of radical openness is an allegiance to machines instead of people.
I bring this up to say that asking whether secrets in the abstract are good or bad is ridiculous. A huge flow of data that one doesn't know how to interpret in context is either useless or worse than useless, if you let it impress you too much. A contextualized flow of data that answers a question you know how to ask can be invaluable. If we want to understand all the sides of an argument, we have to do more than copy files.
Random leaking is no substitute for focused digging. The "everything must be free and open" ideal has nearly bankrupted the overseas news bureaus.
Anarchy and dictatorship are entwined in eternal resonance. One never exists for long without turning to the other, and then back again. The only way out is structure, also known as democracy.
We sanction secretive spheres in order to have our civilian sphere. We furthermore structure democracy so that the secretive spheres are contained and accountable to the civilian sphere, though that's not easy.
There is certainly an ever-present danger of betrayal. Too much power can accrue to those we have sanctioned to hold confidences, and thus we find that keeping a democracy alive is hard, imperfect, and infuriating work. The flip side of responsibly held secrets, however, is trust.
A perfectly open world, without secrets, would be a world without the need for trust, and therefore a world without trust. What a sad sterile place that would be: A perfect world for machines"

As an interesting antidote to Jaron, here is a response by Zeynep Tufekci (see her tweets here and her bio here) also via TheAtlantic.com, and my favorite quotes from that piece:

"Lanier thus conflates the right to privacy of persons with the privilege of non-disclosure that states may sometimes exercise. Raising personhood in this context is irrelevant and dangerous.
"I give you private information about corporations for free," SNL's Assange quipped, "And I'm a villain. Mark Zuckerberg gives your private information to corporations for money and he's the Man of the Year."
In my talk about Wikileaks at the Personal Democracy Forum recently, I emphasized that we should not see information by itself as a change agent and that a glut of information, especially without context and political leverage, may not result in meaningful change. That, however, is not an argument for less information.
During these past weeks, rather than a nerd takeover, I saw the crumbling of the facade of a flat, equal, open Internet and the revelation of an Internet which has corporate power occupying its key crossroads, ever-so-sensitive to any whiff of displeasure by the state. I saw an Internet in danger of becoming merely an interactive version of the television in terms of effective freedom of speech. Remember, the Internet did not create freedom of speech; in theory, we always had freedom of speech--it's just that it often went along with the freedom to be ignored. People had no access to the infrastructure to be heard. Until the Internet, the right to be heard was in most cases reserved to the governments, deep pockets, and corporate media. Before the Internet, trees fell in lonely forests.
The real cause for concern is the emergence of an Internet in which arbitrary Terms-of-Service can be selectively employed by large corporations to boot content they dislike. What is worrisome is an Internet in which it is very easy to marginalize and choke information.
What the Wikileaks furor shows us is that a dissent tax is emerging on the Internet.
We don't have sufficiently-developed laws protecting us as our commons have moved to privately-owned spaces on the Internet. Lanier misses the fact that this is an issue of design, motive and choice.
I reiterate that one does not need to be a fan of Wikileaks to reject the notion that rather than demand increased transparency and disclosure from institutions with power, we should trust them because trust is a human value. Going back to my starting point, it appears that Lanier is once again conflating human-to-human relations and human-institution relations and suggesting that the same principles should apply to them. A world in which humans don't trust each other is indeed cold and inhumane. A world in which we trust powerful institutions merely on principle is one where we abdicate our responsibilities as citizens and human beings..."

So what do you think? Please comment below.

Update: check out this video: journalist John Pilger in conversation with Julian Assange

Posted by Gerd Leonhard at 3:37 PM in Control Fights, Crucial Stuff, Current Affairs, Data is the new Oil, End of Control, Future of Journalism, Future of PR & Communications, Futurism, Futurists, Made me think, Networked Society, Open Is King, Open Network Economy, Openness Issues, Other writers, Privacy, Realizations | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Alvin Toffler: 40 key trends, the next 40 years

One of the world's leading futurists (and a great influence on me), Alvin Toffler, just published a pretty cool PDF depicting his 40 key trends for the next 40 years - a lot of food for thought here.

Download: Toffler: 40 for the Next 40 PDF

Here are some of the key findings that I find most valuable. Read here what FastCompany thinks

Posted by Gerd Leonhard at 1:29 PM in Futerati, Future of Business, Future Watch, Futurism, Futurists, Must Reads, Open Network Economy, Predictions, Resources, Trends | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

A brief description of what I do

That's pretty much it;)

Posted by Gerd Leonhard at 6:00 PM in About Me, Bottom Lines, Funny stuff, Futurism, Futurists | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Check out the new Futerati: feed aggregator / reader with my favorite tweeps

As previewed a few weeks ago, the new beta version of my crowd-sourced tweeple aggregator and tweet-reader "Futerati" is now online and open to all. Futerati is basically a curated site that displays my favorite Twitter people, presented in 20+ categories such as Futurists, Authors, Thought-Leaders, Bloggers, Visionaries etc. You can review all the latest tweets on one page, including the images and videos (much like the Power-Twitter plug-in for Firefox), and you can follow all of them with just a few clicks.

I quite like it - in fact, I am reading a lot of my Twitter updates via Futerati now, myself. Do let me know how you like it. I am still adding people all the time, btw, so... stay tuned!

Posted by Gerd Leonhard at 3:40 PM in Collaborators, Cool people, Cool Tools, Futerati, Futurists, Link Economy, Marketing2.0, News, Open Is King, People, Real-Time Web, Resources, Sharism, Smart People, Social Media, Trends, Twitter, UGC | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Futerati 2.0: my curated 'best people on Twitter' list becomes a live feed aggregator, beta invites available now

You may have seen my first announcement on Futerati, back in July 2009. The idea was to list and display the latest updates from those Twitter friends that I like the most, thereby acknowledging how important they are to my work, and directing some attention back to them.

Since then, Twitter has become even more important to me (and to many of my clients, especially in the music industry) because it offers real-time access to many really brilliant people around the world that freely share their thoughts, resources, links, blog posts, pictures, videos and presentations. And what's more: you can actually watch their stuff as it pops up, and talk to them, too!

Miraculously, I have somehow even gone past the 10.000 followers point, myself (not that those numbers really matter, though - keep that in mind) - thanks to all of you, out there.

I have met some really great people through Twitter, and have already booked quite a few speaking gigs through Twitter as well - so the benefits cover the entire spectrum; and yes, they are monetizable (if you should care about that). Here is a screen-shot of the new Futerati:

After the initial launch of Futerati (see the old site, here), I was very fortunate to hook up with NZ programming wiz and Tangerine Works Founder Nick Taylor (via Twitter!) who offered to help us to make Futerati a lot more attractive by actually displaying the images and videos within each tweet, and by turning the whole project into a really fancy feed aggregator and powerful tweet-reader. Nick was joined by my designer and web-master Benjamin Blust (of B2Media) and a really nice, crowd-sourced effort was underway. Thanks, guys!

The new Futerati now features 20+ categories of personally selected futurists, visionaries, bloggers, journalists, authors, VCs, startups, entrepreneurs, thought-leaders, artists, film-makers, technology experts, social media gurus etc. Every single person that is listed here is included because I really value their contributions and because I read their tweets constantly, myself. You can ask to be included but there is no guarantee as to if and when I can add you; right now it's based solely on showing up on my own radar screen.

Because we are still testing quite a few features such as the automatic updates and the importing of images etc, we will provide the public URL on February 1, 2010; however, in the meantime you can request the beta-test link if you want to check it out right away.

Here is a short slideshow:

Posted by Gerd Leonhard at 1:29 PM in 21st Century Content Ecology, Announcements, Cool Tools, Futerati, Future of PR & Communications, Futurists, Inspiring, News, Open Is King, People, Sharism, Social Media, Social Networks, Stuff I Love, Twitter | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Don Tapscott: Anybody that thinks we come out of this recession and get back to business as usual is deeply mistaken

Don Tapscott (whose voice eerily reminds me of Marshall McLuhan) is one of my favorite writers and thinkers. As part of the really cool 'Penny for your Thoughts'(PFYT) series, the FreedomLab people have just published a great video with Don's comments on what's really happening in this economic crisis - the headline is "Re-Industrialize the Planet". A quick summary:

The web is creating a global infrastructure for collaboration (which leads to disruption and confusion)
As a result, all of our institutions have come to the end of their life-cycle
The current recession is a crucial punctuation point in human history - the point where we said that we need to reset, the point where the industrial economy has finally run out of gas
This paradigm shift is creating a crisis of leadership
The Digital Natives are inheriting this situation - and they think very differently
Kids are now the authority on many issues
We have 40 years to re-industrialize the planet

Posted by Gerd Leonhard at 8:35 AM in 21st Century Content Ecology, Current Affairs, Future Watch, Futurists, Other writers, Politics of Content, Pure Fiction?, Realizations, Videos I Like | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Great video by Don Tapscott: Rebuild the World

Don Tapscott - the Wikinomics guy - is just a great speaker, with seemingly endless knowledge, and one of the people that constantly inspire me in my own work (check out the new Futerati.com for all the others...) This video has so many great pieces of wisdom in it that you'll just need to watch the entire 62 minutes! Thanks to Sander Duivestein at VINT / SOGETI for sending this my way. From the Vimeo site:

"The global economic crisis is a wakeup call to the world: we need to rethink and rebuild many of the organizations and institutions that have served us well for decades, but now have come to the end of their life cycle. The financial services industry, for example, does not just need fresh infusion of capital or some new regulations; it needs a whole new operating model — one based on transparency, sharing of intellectual property and global governance.

As the crisis has spread to other sectors in the economy and even other sectors of society, it is exposing structural weaknesses and modes of operation that no longer nurture social and economic growth. The recent collapse of many newspapers is just one storm-warning of more to come: conventional wisdom isn’t going to cut it for success in this century. We need to reinvent our institutions..."

The new keynote "Rebuilding the World" by Don Tapscott from Sander Duivestein on Vimeo.

Posted by Gerd Leonhard at 12:30 AM in Futurists, Openness Issues, Other writers, People, Predictions, Recession survival, Trends, Videos I Like | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

What I do (so...wth is a Futurist?)

I get this question a lot: what do you actually do? What do you spend your time on? What's your own business model? And, above all, of course: what in the world is a Futurist (this usually comes from the non-anglo crowds;).

Here is a simple answer: there are 2 parts to what I do:

Understanding trends, new ideas, shifts, changes, recent developments, people and cultures
Imagining and presenting future scenarios and 3-5 year fore-sights based on that understanding

So, Understanding and Ideas, basically.
Note: this video clip has been licensed via istockphoto.com and is subject to their copyright.

Posted by Gerd Leonhard at 1:23 PM in About Me, Futurists, MY PRESENTATIONS, My speaking engagements | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Technorati Tags: consultant, Essays, Future, Futurist, Glen Hiemstra, History, Organizations, Prediction

"Where Is It Going": new Twitter-based video show with Futurist Glen Hiemstra: ready for your questions

I recently started a brand-new project with my friend and fellow futurist Glen Hiemstra, entitled Where Is It Going (WiiG). The concept is simple: we are taking questions from anyone, via Twitter, on any future-related topic, and we will record 5-8 minute long videos of Glen and myself attempting to answer as many questions as we can, on a weekly basis. We will also add a few other futurists from our network once we have solved a few technical issues. We have also started discussions with a potential partner that will help us with producing better videos -stay tuned.

This is how you can participate in WhereIsItGoing (WiiG):

Be sure to follow @gleonhard and @glenhiemstra on Twitter
Tweet your futuristic questions to us, anytime, but be sure to use the hashtag #wiig (this way we can find your questions via Twitter Search, no matter if you addressed them to us or not)
If you want your tweets to be included on the live video of the twitter stream (#wiig) please be sure to tweet at 9 am PST / 12 noon EST / 6pm CET /12 midnight Singapore, and follow the live tweets via twitter search; we will publish the finished video on WhereIsItGoing.com soon afterwards. We will be on the tweet streams for at least 20 minutes.

Spread the word!