Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Facade Unknown
more known
trends emerge as trends emerge as
policy and regulation social currency
residual dominant
disruptive emergent
trends emerge as trends emerge as new
dissent and renewal technique and ritual
less known
scenarioDNA - global cultural foresight 10
RESIDUAL TRENDS
ghost town
economics
Expectations Are That We Will Mostly Build
Less Functional Cities.
ghost town
economics
The lack of planning insight and purpose
leads to ghost towns. Ghost towns have
historically been created when a built city is
no longer economically viable and
abandoned. We only find such ghost towns
alluring when they are quaint and romantic.
We think very differently about ghost towns
when they are in our backyard. As they
begin to build new cities, countries have
begun to inadvertently address their ghost
town situations.
ghost gigs
The Workers Of The Gig Economy Are
Foundational, But Invisible.
ghost gigs
“The future of work is focused heavily on the
gig economy and the workers who power it,”
writes Arran Stewart in the article “What The
Job Market Can Learn From The Coronavirus
Crisis,” Nasdaq.com, March 24, 2020. “These
people cannot continue to be treated as
“independent contract workers” when they’re
integral to the function of these companies. The
future of work can not be built on such shaky
ground that there is little to no support for
these integral workers during this crisis.”
ghost gigs
ghost gigs
ghost populi
There is an inability for policymakers
to keep up.
“Software constrains
behaviour with an efficiency
that no law can match. It's all
changing fast; technology is
literally creating the world we
all live in.”
---—Bruce Schneier, “We must bridge the gap
between technology and policymaking. Our future
depends on it,” WEforum.org, November 12, 2019.
ghost populi
“Technologists and policymakers largely inhabit
two separate worlds,” writes Bruce Schneier in
the article “We must bridge the gap between
technology and policymaking. Our future
depends on it,” WEforum.org, Nov 12, 2019. “It's
an old problem, one that the British scientist CP
Snow identified in a 1959 essay entitled The Two
Cultures. He called them sciences and
humanities, and pointed to the split as a major
hindrance to solving the world’s problems. The
essay was influential - but 60 years later, nothing
has changed.” We need to scale up the process
that creates public-interest technologists.
ghost populi
ghost populi
ghost worlds
We are all feeling a little disconnected.
ghost worlds
“Ghosting became a cultural buzzword in
2018,” writes Marisa Bate in “Ghosting’s not
just a cowardly dating trend – it’s haunting us
everywhere,” Marie Claire, October 29, 2019.
“Used to describe someone leaving a
relationship without informing the other
person, simply ‘disappearing’, it spoke to the
fleeting and temporary experience of modern,
digital life...We’re seeing the same scenario in
other settings. We’ve committed to
something – a job, a friendship, some sort of
social or cultural contract or exchange, and,
suddenly, as if in a puff of smoke, the other
end of the deal is missing.”
ghost worlds
Awkwardness avoidance
continues to present as ghosting
ghost worlds
phantom
physicians
We are shoe horning technology into chaotic
siloed practices.
phantom
physicians
“Rather than treating today’s inefficient,
hodgepodge system as a baseline for the future
of primary care, we should instead ask two
questions: How many doctors would we really
need if best, evidence-based practices were
widely adopted? And how can we encourage
adoption of those practices?” write Christopher
Kerns and Dave Willis in “The Problem with U.S.
Health Care Isn’t a Shortage of Doctors,” Harvard
Business Review, March 16, 2020. “The real
shortage is one of the courage to disrupt the way
things have been done for decades.”
phantom physicians
phantom physicians
paradise lost
The perfect moment for a
philosophical pause.
paradise lost
“As more and more travelers journey
across the world, it is becoming clear
that rejecting the culture of mass tourism
and embracing individual experiences in
conjunction with local communities
uniquely provides for a sustainable and
enjoyable future of tourism,” writes Andy
Wang, “From Tourists to Travelers,”
Harvard Political Review, March 15,
2020. “Travel provides opportunities for
individuals to immerse themselves in
another culture, an adventure that cannot
be replicated at home.”
paradise lost
paradise lost
ghost food
systems
Ghost kitchens are a bet that the future
of food lies in delivery.
ghost food
systems
“Delivery-only kitchens are not new,” writes
Jonah Engel Bromwich, “Farm to Table? More
Like Ghost Kitchen to Sofa,” NYTimes,
December 24, 2019. “David Chang was a key
investor in Maple (which shut down in 2017). He
believes that eventually a delivery business will
build out, or combine with, a ghost kitchen
concept (what DoorDash has done in Redwood
City, at scale) and change the world. The
creators of ghost kitchens think the concept
represents optimization of an already-efficient
system. Cheng is more ‘concerned from a
restaurant operator’s perspective. Is it really
freedom or is it more servitude?’”
Off-premise platform
Ghost kitchens are
turns other restaurants
fueled by delivery apps.
into ghost kitchens
autonomous
living patterns
New metrics will be brought into the
autonomous vocabulary.
IMAGE: AR Post
autonomous
living patterns
“The COVID-19 pandemic accelerates an
automated future that’s already on its way,”
writes Bastiane Huang, “Will this crisis help
set autonomous AI on the right course?”
VentureBeat, March 26, 2020. “It serves as a
wake-up call…focus on deploying real-world
solutions that can run 24 hours a day with
minimum human intervention and deliver
true value to users…Suddenly, autonomous
machines need to be better than just proof
of concept. They must be robust enough to
work independently across various real-life
situations.”
humanless
spaces
What we learn in cashierless has
broad industry applicability.
“[Cashierless]
fundamentally tackles a
problem of how do you get
convenience in physical
locations, especially when
people are hard-pressed
for time.”
Amazon VP Dilip Kumar, “Amazon is selling
its cashierless technology to other vendors,”
Jason Del Rey, Vox, Mar 11, 2020
humanless
spaces
“Much like Amazon Go, 7-Eleven's cashierless
store is powered by an app, which
distinguishes one customer's purchases from
another's in the store through a mix of
algorithms and predictive technology,” writes
Caroline Jansen, “What 7-Eleven's cashierless
ambitions signal about the future of
convenience stores,” Retail Dive, February 19,
2020. “Competition in the space is heating up,
and for good reason. Nearly half of consumers
using unattended retail (including vending
machines, cashierless stores and self-serve
kiosks) do so because it's faster than
traditional retail.”
humanless spaces
humanless spaces
invisible
indicators
Collaboration gets real and immediate.
invisible
indicators
“The threat of COVID-19 is bringing out the
best in both science and politics,” writes Daniel
Sarewitz, “What the Pandemic Is Telling Us
About Science, Politics, and Values,” Slate,
March 24, 2020. “The lesson is not that we
need to always listen to experts and that
science will show us the way to go. It’s that a
shared sense of our commonality as humans
is the essential condition of a society that has
the tools to deal with its problems. Common
values, not expert assertions about facts, are
what make science good enough to act on.”
invisible indicators
Rising sea levels are creating Scientists have found "ghost particles" coming from inside the
graveyards of disappearing forests. Earth. Radioactive decay produces the invisible “geoneutrinos.”
invisible indicators
shadow
currencies
The real goal is frictionless virtual
transactions wherever needed.
shadow
currencies
“The US has two bills in Congress and one in
the House, one in the Senate that talk about
digitizing the dollar and the digitization not only
just at the institutional level,” Samuel Haig cites
Lukka Library creator Roger Brown in
“Cryptocurrency Accounting Firm Launches
Library of Legal and Tax Advice,”
Cointelegraph, March 25, 2020. “…but they're
also going to creating a digital wallet for each
U.S. person to, in effect, no longer have to
deal with currency. And that's incredibly
important.”
shadow currencies
shadow currencies
stealth
operations
Beginning solutions now will take us
safely into the future.
stealth
operations
“The World Economic Forum has listed nine of
the world smartest factories, calling them
‘lighthouses’ that shed light on the benefits of
Industry 4.0,” writes Martin Walder, “How
smart technology is transforming the industrial
world,” ManufacturingGlobal.com, March 22,
2020. “These factories are the ones that have
successfully implemented the smartest
technologies, whilst keeping people and
sustainability at the heart of what they do.” The
NIST defines smart as “fully integrated,
collaborative manufacturing systems that
respond in real time.”
stealth operations
Distilleries and breweries pivot to In the wake of the Covid-19 crisis, medical device companies
producing hand sanitizer. Local distillers will be able to use a Bright Machines Microfactory for free
were a critical part of the movement. to expedite production for up to 12 months.
stealth operations
Authors
Marie Lena Tupot, marielena@scenariodna.com
Timothy J. Stock, timstock@scenariodna.com