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WELCOME TO Tomorrowland
The world is being Turned on iTs head as change occurs aT a pace greaTer Than aT any oTher period in human hisTory. lexus finds ouT whaTs around The corner wiTh The help of some leading fuTurisTs.
words chris sheedy | iLLUsTrATioN scoTT chambers

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THe FUTURe IS AlReAdy HeRe, yOU just have to know where to look, the futurists say. They tell stories of the use of technology in cities such as Tokyo and Seoul, of transport choices in cities such as Amsterdam and Copenhagen and of balances of power shifting from the USA to China. But what exactly does it all mean for us, for the individuals who will be affected by the rapid and rampant change that were seeing around us on a daily basis. What type of world will our children be living in? Mike Walsh, CeO of innovation research agency Tomorrow and author of Futuretainment, and futurist Richard Watson, author of Future files: A history of the next 50 years, believe everything in our brave new world will revolve around networks. The future is all about connectivity, Walsh explains. When people are connected you get feedback loops of behaviour. A good example is what happens in the world of ants. An ant individually is quite stupid, but collectively ants can do amazing things and thats because their behaviour is linked through pheromone trails etc, meaning they are connected. The same thing is happening with human behaviour thanks to the internet and other communication tools. Were now so linked we have built a matrix of knowledge which collectively makes everything work more efficiently. Outside of increased connectivity, the other great catalysts of change, say Walsh

and Watson, are the ageing population and the global financial climate. Regarding the corporate world there has been a major shift towards seriousness, Watson says. People are looking smart at work, wearing ties and having conservative haircuts because they dont want to lose their jobs. And a funny current trend is that people who previously had silly job titles are changing back to serious ones. I know a woman who was known as Catalyst For Magic. She has now changed her title to IT Manager. The silliness has vanished and theres a shift back to basics.

fashion
One major change in the world of fashion, Walsh says, is wearable computing. In Tokyo I met with the head interaction designer at Sonys advanced research labs. He has crammed a computer into a Bluetooth headset and created a gesture-based

interaction model. By gesturing you can initiate a phone call, for instance, or it will project onto your palm the control panel of an MP3 device so you can select music. This actually works now. So a computer becomes something we put on in the morning. Theres also a huge shift away from mass-produced labels and towards environmentally-conscious quality garments, Watson says. Buyers more than ever will want to know where the garment is from and how it was made to ensure theyre buying from a worthy brand. People are beginning to compare social, environmental and ethical values of a brand in the same way they compare price and quality, he says.

have dropped 25 per cent in the last 12 months. But concern for the environment will never go away. Over the next few decades well start running out of minerals and materials quite rapidly, Watson says. Purchasing of resources will become strategic with some countries refusing to sell them, preferring to keep them to themselves. As soon as China becomes the biggest economy in the world, around 2025, the US will likely become quite protectionist.

waTson says The lexus model of car producTion is The model of The fuTure in ThaT iT heaVily inVolVes The uTilisaTion of hybrid moTors.

Technology
Facebook-type networks will be applied to virtually everything, Walsh says. For instance, a similar networking idea will be applied to the motorway over the next five years as our cars become information collectors that feed back to the internet. Our cars will capture content as they drive, providing traffic information, information about the route we take most often, road and weather conditions, average speeds and data on the places we go the most. essentially our cars will become nodes on the internet. The next generation of GPS will integrate with the web, he explains. It wont just show you where to go but will answer the question where should I go? The answer will come from recommendations from your network. Think of Amazon the best recommendations come from people of similar taste to you. Apply that idea to learning from your network about where the best restaurant is thats closest to your current location. When the car is driven in a way that is not aggressive the vine grows, but drive in a petrol-consuming way and it starts to shrivel. Its a big learning from the internet, he says. If you provide very simple incentives you can shift behaviour. Watson says the lexus model of car production is the model of the future in that it heavily involves the utilisation of hybrid motors. Petrol will still be around in 25 years but there will also be a rise of the plug-in vehicle, the car that uses electricity. There will also be a renaissance of public transport and of walking and cycling as cities become more crowded, Watson says. The models he looks to for future reference are Copenhagen and Amsterdam. chips embedded in products, Walsh says. In Tokyo you can choose a lipstick, put it on a special counter in front of a mirror and itll show you exactly what that lipstick will look like on you. The RFId is essentially a chip that broadcasts information about the product. It also allows shop staff to do a stocktake by simply walking down an aisle with a receiver.

enVironmenT
As we begin to worry about other things, such as paying bills, we become less environmentally aware, Watson says. Sales of organic products in the UK, for instance,

enTerTainmenT
Forget about buying a television. What youll instead be bringing home from the entertainment store is a large touch screen that will provide not only television but also video on demand, internet, music, home video, photo albums and more all of the multimedia within the typical home. This will have a huge impact for brands thinking about advertising, Walsh says. Television used to have the monopoly on bringing moving pictures into the household, but no more. With infinite content available on demand the most difficult question is not how you get to see it but rather knowing what you want to see, Walsh says. When we were growing up we had a paper-based TV guide. The new generation get all their recommendations from people whose tastes they trust, from

reTail
Shop owners beware, a new breed of consumer is on the way and theyre armed with mobile phones! doesnt sound too scary? Consider this there is now an application in the USA called Shop Savvy which allows a shopper to hold their mobile phone camera over the barcode of a product. The phone will then tell them if that product is available cheaper anywhere within a 15-minute walk. Another interesting development is the rise of RFId (radio frequency identification)

moToring
Speaking of cars, Walsh says car designers are building more interactive visual platforms. For instance, in order to make people change driving habits some prototype cars have been built with a visual of a vine on the screen inside the car.

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their social network. Interestingly, Watson says that as the world becomes more digitised, live performance will actually become more popular. That live, shared experience of being in a large area with hundreds of others will not go away and in fact will become more important, he says. The more life becomes virtual the more people want to slow it down and get attracted to the physical.

public spaces
Time and space uncluttered, quiet space will become a luxury, Watson says. Public spaces, including squares and parks will become more commercialised with flat screens on or in walls and even narrow beams of sound containing audible advertisements targeting people on a particular footpath, for instance. look at the way bus stops have developed for a guide to how other public spaces might look in the future, he says. But Walsh believes there will be an upside to the digitisation of cities. Cities will become digital platforms. Seoul is a great example; it has ubiquitous high-speed mobile broadband so the entire city becomes clickable. There is a great application for iPhones where you can put your iPhone camera over any object in the city and leave a little comment on it. Anyone else who comes to the same place and holds up their iPhone will see the comment you left there. Its applying to reality everything weve learnt from the web.

homes
As overcrowding of cities increases homes will change in two distinct ways, our experts say. The security measures that we use to protect our homes will become more hightech, including face recognition technology that will turn on lights and call the police when, for instance, a stranger enters the garden at night. The other change will be a polarisation between wired homes and homes that are

seen as refuges from a wired world. Some people will want to unplug and have their home as a sanctuary, Watson says. These people will have a bit of technology but not much. Then youll have the other extreme, the people who have a completely wired home. Their home will know when they are close by and will start doing things for them put the heating on or run a bath etc. OUR FUTURISTS BOTH AGRee THAT In almost every field the future is already here in one form or another. Whether its hybrid engines, digital cities, wearable computing or social networks, the patterns have already been developed. All that remains now is to find out how each of us as individuals will be influenced by the changes.

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