I think they both covered [...]]]> With the arrival of the New Year, trend forecasting firms have compiled lists of trends to watch during 2010. JWT Intelligence (the research arm of the American marketing communications giant JWT) has compiled a list of 100 things to watch in 2010. A similar compilation is available from the Dutch firm Trendwatching.com.

I think they both covered it well. There is a mixture of tech trends, cultural value shifts in society, consumer trends, food trends, gadgets, rising celebrities, and some macro trends. What is interesting to note is that several trends are overlapping and sometimes contradict each other. But I assume that is a consequence of our multi-faceted society, rife with contradictions.

The ongoing backlash against the bubble of greed and the adjustment to a more frugal, energy efficient lifestyle will dominate even in 2010. Traditional luxury is out. It might be replaced by products in limited editions sold in a few temporary pop-up stores in one city (products you can’t buy on the web).

Greenery and health conscious food choices have been on the rise for over a decade. Demand for accountability of corporations will be stronger and even more pronounced in the mainstream culture of 2010. Will we see a wider ban on plastic shopping bags? More cities that ban bottled drinking water? Strict quotas on blue fin tuna?

Some trends are related to China and India. Conspicuous luxury consumption might be on its way out in the West but is a rising force in China. For example, as China replaces Japan as the world’s second Economy it is a growth market for global auction houses. The Chinese athlete cum entrepreneur Li Ning has his own brand of athletic shoes with the potential to challenge Nike. In 2010, international buyers will discover contemporary art from India, etc.

A strong trend is the real-time web, the tracking and alerting of everything, instant gratification, and immediate product feedback. At the same time, the trend watchers also talk about opposite trends such as a renaissance for handwriting, slow communication, and calming soft drinks (the opposite to Red Bull). Another contradiction is that both the anti-copyright Pirate Party and Paid Content are listed as two trends for 2010.

Social media will continue to be a tidal wave in 2010. It will not isolate us by keeping us glued to our computers but will rather open up new opportunities for meeting others in real life. This trend has been labeled “mass mingling”. Some tech trends are: electric cars, 3D in the home, web/TV integration, LED light bulbs, and rivals to Kindle. A couple of products to watch are dry shampoo and waterless washing machines.

However, it is important to be aware of their limitations. My impression is that their focus is too much on mainstream consumer culture in the US/EU with a rather short time perspective. Most of these trends have been out there for years before they were strong enough to be identified as a new trend by the trend agencies. It is possible to identify these trends even earlier.

If you want to identify weak signals for emerging fundamental change early; listen to and embrace fringe phenomena, contrarians, and counter cultures. It is the neglected, ridiculed and suppressed viewpoints that might have important insights and perspectives that you are oblivious to if you only read mainstream media and focus on the mainstream market. This is the somewhat forgotten lesson from Peter Swartz in his classic book on futurism and forecasting from 1990 (The Art of the Long View).

Here is an example: during the height of the bubble in 2006-2007, one would have been better prepared for the storm by immersing oneself in anti-capitalist counter cultures. The dissenting voices that criticized US style financial capitalism and compiled facts for the case that the economy was heading for a crash were right on. They should have charged a consulting fee.

It seems that they actually got it right, but I can already hear the criticism from the Net camp: don’t try to replicate a dying format, single purpose gadgets will limit the infinite [...]]]> The Swedish media house Bonnier has developed an eReader concept for magazines that has received considerable media attention (shown in the video demo below):

It seems that they actually got it right, but I can already hear the criticism from the Net camp: don’t try to replicate a dying format, single purpose gadgets will limit the infinite choice for the users and be rejected, old media is dead, an RSS feed is much better, where is the Facebook integration, where are the links, I want radio, it would be cool with console games, and on and on.

My interpretation of the video and comments from the development team is that the point of this reader is to create the visual experience of a high-end glossy lifestyle magazine.

If that’s their goal then they’re really on to something. In a world dominated by real time chatter, a firehose of information overload, trashy celeb gossip, and fast sloppy news reporting there is a growing market for the opposite niche. When you read a magazine you reach the final page, are done and feel the satisfaction of completion. That never happens with an RSS-feed.

There are plenty of people who still enjoy a calm, minimalistic aesthetic experience. A well crafted story, superb command of the written language, reflection, interesting facts, compelling arguments and beautiful photos are still appreciated.

In a magazine, the limit in size and pre-determined format force authors to focus and concentrate. This is good for both quality and creativity, just look at the strict rules in classical poetry or the 140 character limit in Twitter.

If the Mag+ is designed with stunning colors and excellent readability it will imbue the magazines you read with a sense of quality and importance that is lost on the web where everything is one click away.

Less is more; I clearly remember how I eagerly awaited the six annual issues of Harvard Business Review in the 1990s. When they doubled the number of issues, they had problems filling every issue with groundbreaking articles. Reading all the issues felt like a burden, and I remember feeling how the magic was lost.

The Mag+ reader will not prevent a blood bath among print magazines. The path of thinning editorial budgets and deteriorating craftsmanship that many magazines (and newspapers) have taken as a way of keeping profits up will be rejected by the customers.

However, around 20% of the publications have a chance at survival. The magazines that dare to go the opposite way and increase their editorial budgets can use the Mag+ reader as a distribution channel for their paying subscribers. Think of National Geographic, Nature, the Economist, Condé Nast Traveller, and Vogue as the magazines you would read on the Mag+.

One example is I-Tech’s Virtual Keyboard (introduced in 2005) with a red laser [...]]]> Eventually the mouse and keyboard will be replaced as our primary way of interfacing with the digital world by something else. Voice input, and pen/finger based touch screens are the most well-known candidates but there are several other more advanced technologies being developed.

One example is I-Tech’s Virtual Keyboard (introduced in 2005) with a red laser that projects a keyboard on to any surface. You type and the sensors will detect the key that got the light blocked. The $170 price tag has prevented this product from entering the mainstream market.

Virtual Laser Keyboard

Another example is multi-touch screen technology. An amazing demo at TED from 2006 shows envisioned ways of using it on a high end computer with a large screen. A more simple version of multi-touch has been included in the iPhone since 2007.

The coffee table sized Microsoft Surface is a high end multi-touch product that has been on the market since 2008. The horizontal screen can identify what objects you place on the surface. If you put your smartphone on the screen and drag pictures to the mobile with your finger they will be uploaded to the phone (and vice versa). As long as the price tag stays at $13,500 the market will be limited to casinos, hotels, and eye catching marketing events. Visually compelling video demos from Microsoft are here and here and another from Popular Mechanics is here.

Microsoft Surface: multi-touch flat screen

Competing products are the DiamondTouch Table from Mitsubishi, the Malaysian SmartSurface, and the iTable from PQ Labs. A less advanced product with multi-touch is the high end PC model TouchSmart from HP. In the six figure price range the Multi-Touch Collaboration Wall from Perceptive Pixel has customers such as the U.S. military and CNN (they used it in their studio during the presidential election).

The Multi-Touch Collaboration Wall

These new technologies are amazing and should inspire creative thought about new and unexpected ways of using them. You might find some demo applications silly but the point is to demonstrate the opportunities. It’s up to you, me, and others to discover the killer apps for this technology.

However, the most mind-boggling prototype has been developed at MIT Media Lab by the genius inventor Pranav Mistry in his project SixthSense.

He has a similar vision of blurring the line between the digital world and our physical surroundings and making it possible to access and interact with computers without dedicated input/output interfaces. He uses standard products, and assembles them into a seamless experience with a wearable system connected to your mobile. He uses a mini projector to display text and images on any surface and a camera to scan your hand gestures and objects in front of you. The software for the system will be released to open source developers any day now.

Sit back and enjoy this fantastic presentation from TED India.

“Perfect, [...]]]> What will happen to society and the individual if everything is remembered forever and nothing is forgotten? This thought-provoking question is addressed by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger (information policy professor, National University of Singapore) in the book “Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age” (Princeton Univ. Press 2009). His pessimistic answer is that:

“Perfect, comprehensive digital memory denies human beings the ability to grow, to change, and to evolve over time. That is deeply worrying.”

His argument is similar to that of the privacy advocates’, though he approaches it from a new angle. In a world with perfect retrievable memories people can be haunted and destroyed by something from their past or from their private lives at any time. What is innocent information today can be incriminating evidence in an uncertain future with another government, a changed cultural value system, or if the person moves on to a new phase in his or her life.

In such a world people would self-censor, refrain from expressing their opinions, and be fearful about sharing their thoughts, words and photo albums with their friends.

Mayer-Schönberger illustrates this concept with a story about the student teacher Stacy Snyder. Snyder had passed all her exams and had earned all her credits but was refused her teaching certificate because she had put an innocent costume party photo of herself on her MySpace page with the caption “drunken pirate”. Snyder offered to remove the picture but to no avail.

The 25 year old student teacher who had her future ruined by a MySpace picture

An additional example is the Canadian psychotherapist Andrew Feldmar who was permanently barred from entering the US when a customs officer did a Google search and found an article he wrote in an academic journal ten years ago where he mentioned that he had used LSD around 1965. As Schönberger points out, what happened 40 years ago has nothing to do with Feldmar’s life or the person he is today.

There are numerous other examples of people who have had their lives shattered because something from their private sphere or their distant past resurfaced on the internet and was taken out of context.

Another of Mayer-Schönberger’s arguments is that a perfect memory is a curse, not a blessing. Rare medical cases where people are unable to forget (and therefore remember exactly what happened every day of their lives) show that these people become overwhelmed with trivial details and have difficulty making normal everyday decisions.

The book is a first attempt to address this issue. The author’s idea is to formulate a framework for how to shift the default mode in the information society back to slowly forgetting (the natural human state for millennia), instead of remembering. The methods he identifies could focus either on the power aspects or on bringing the time aspects back into the equation. He identifies six methods for managing the problem:

• Digital Abstinence (stay away from the Net, or at least don’t put everything about yourself on Facebook)

• Privacy Rights (these are the rights to request that information be removed from corporate and public databases, websites, etc.)

• Privacy DRM (the idea of tagging pieces of digital information with limitations such as date for deletion, noindex instructions for search engines, restrictions for who can access this information, etc.)

• Cognitive Adjustment (learn to devalue old information and understand that it is less relevant and credible)

• Full Contextualization (keep all information, but by including the context of single pieces of information the risks of misinterpretation will be minimized)

• Information Ecology (laws for record keeping and compulsory deletion of old database records)

When Mayer-Schönberger discusses the methods he points out that privacy rights is a useless tool since individuals almost never actively request that their information be removed or take their claims to court. Information Ecology rules are more efficient as they protect all information. However, the data retention laws that were initiated after 9/11 move in the opposite direction.

The author proposes that the default in the digital world should be changed to slowly forgetting instead of remembering. Perhaps one should receive a prompt for when one wants an item to expire every time a document is saved or something is put on the internet. This would serve as an important reminder about the temporal nature of information.

To some extent I think he is barking up the wrong tree. Instead of proposing an elaborate system for forgetting in the digital world, the problem would be significantly reduced in a more relaxed and trusting culture.

The first problem is that we live in a society driven by the logic of the tabloids, rife with hysterical moral panics. Background checks and diligence create a self-reinforcing process, where the mindset of the trash media feeds into the mainstream corporate environment. If you devote significant resources to uncovering incriminating information you will most likely find something minor. To justify the costs of the investigation it is much easier to disregard the context and act on the information rather than be lenient. This pro-panic bias feeds itself. If a major company or government agency rejects a qualified candidate for a senior role because of some 15 year old nude pictures it sets the tone and other organisations will follow their lead.

The second problem is that moral panics feed into the legislative process, which results in disproportionate laws. If lawmakers could deliver a professional, rational and proportional legal system many of the problems addressed by Mayer-Schönberger would disappear on their own. For example, the statue of limitation rules for minor crimes would make it moot if someone used drugs more than 10 years ago. Policies for the “morality” of teachers should be handled by professional managers, not by politicians and political appointees with a need to pump themselves up and show toughness against alleged “immorality”.

The third problem is that information is power. As long as incriminating material can be a bargaining chip that can give you a hold on your enemies there will be incentives to hoard information. Even if the full program for forgetting were implemented, bad faith information hoarders would ignore it. But this problem would dissolve by itself if society was more relaxed. The more bans and restrictions that are not respected, the more hypocrisy there is in a society, and the more room for blackmail.

My personal belief is that the tidal wave of digital information is stronger than any program for forgetting. The problems brought up by Mayer-Schönberger might very well lead to a repressive, paranoid, self-censoring society, where people are afraid of surveillance, backstabbing, and attacks in the same way as in the former Soviet Union. (I find this negative development less likely outside of the US and the UK. In France, for example, infidelity by leading politicians is a non-issue.)

But even in the US/UK, it is possible to envision a positive development, driven by the forces of demography as one generation is replaced by the next. Over time the Facebook generation will grow up and their new life on the Net will initially clash with the value system of the older generation. For example, the teenage practice of sending sexual text messages or pictures via the mobile phone (sexting) is widespread (20-25% according to surveys). In the next 10-15 years there will be a number of scandals in which hard working, bright career lawyers are denied partnership because a raunchy nude picture that was taken when they were a teenager resurfaced during a background check. A number of aspiring public figures will have their lives destroyed when the tabloids realize how easy it is to uncover damning material by paying hard cash.

I believe that the public guardians of “morality” will eventually lose this battle in the same way as the prohibitionists lost their battle to keep alcohol illegal. In 2030 most people under 40 will have been to a costume party, played with a camera in the bedroom during their teen years, or have a friend who took pictures of them drinking alcohol in their dorm room even though they were under 21. At some point, the sympathies will shift from the zealots to the “culprits” as the new generation gets fed up with the older generation’s hypocritical moral panics. Recruiters will eventually realize that a ten year old Facebook picture in which the candidate is drunk and surrounded by friends does not disqualify him. Rather, it can be seen as an indication of social skills. In 2030 the newly appointed prosecutor will be forgiven for any ten year old “scandal” that has resurfaced about his dorm room shenanigans. If society is flooded with “scandalous” material about almost everyone, eventually no one will have the energy to care or be upset by it. Ergo, the material will be forgotten. (As a bonus we will have a more relaxed society with discredited tabloids and fewer moral panics.)

The article mentions several examples of companies [...]]]> The Economist recently ran an excellent article (“Japan’s technology champions – Invisible but indispensable”) about successful medium size Japanese companies that are global market leaders in proprietary high-tech components. As their unique capabilities are so hard to replicate they can enjoy stable and very high profits year after year.

The article mentions several examples of companies that in Japan are labeled chuken kigyo (strong, medium-sized firm). For example, the unknown company Nidec makes 75% of the micro-motors for hard-disk drives in computers. Japan Steel Works is the only company that can make the huge solid-steel vessel that contains the radioactivity in a nuclear power plant. Only the Japanese company has the technology to forge a single 600-tonne steel ingot into the critical $150m part. The Japanese company Murata has 40% of the global market for capacitors and their overall margins (including other lines of business) is around 50%. Shimano earns around $1.5 billion a year by supplying 60-70% of the world’s bicycle gears and brakes. Covalent controls 70% of the market for carbon brushes in electric motors. A few Japanese firms are indispensable in four critical steps in the process of making computer chips: wafer processing; thin-film formation; coating, lithography and developing; and contact and packaging. The success of these companies is a case study for management theory and they hold valuable lessons for the rest of us.

What these companies illustrate is that making a critical component (or module) that that are built on proprietary knowledge can be a very profitable market position if you are the global market leader.

The Japanese chuken kigyo companies take the idea of protecting their unique capabilities to the extreme. They often own their critical supply chains and some firms even make their own production machinery in order to maintain a deep proprietary understanding of their technology. The knowledge about the technology is tacit, not formal. It accumulates by working with colleagues over many years. This poses a barrier to entry for rivals. It is also why these firms try to maintain lifetime employment.

Another contributing factor to their success can be found in Japanese culture. A strong emphasis on quality, structure, and excellence permeates Japanese society. There is right way of doing even trivial tasks such wrapping presents or making tea, and a way of learning to be a master by total concentration and paying attention to details. A work force brought up with this set of values is of course an asset for companies that strive for excellence in complicated technologies.

The German Mittelstands are another example of successful medium size firms that exploit unique proprietary capabilities in a similar way. Features in German culture such as the emphasis on quality, durability, order, structure, craftsmanship and attention to detail have been used to explain the success of the Mittelstands and are strikingly similar to the Japanese value system.

The implication is not that a strategy of excellence in proprietary knowledge only works in Japan and Germany. There are numerous examples of companies that have succeeded in proprietary advanced technology components throughout the world.

Unfortunately, in some countries it would be an uphill battle to go against the dominating work ethics and business culture. The necessary long-term perspective will be hard to accomplish if short-term financial results are allowed to dominate strategic decision making. Preventing high staff turnover will be a problem if the cultural norm is to frequently change jobs. If the norm is to fire staff as soon as there is a dip in revenues, companies will not be able to build staff loyalty. If a country has a substandard work ethic with a laid back attitude about quality, professionalism and service it will be difficult to motivate staff to commit to changing the way they work in order to attain this kind of perfectionism.

A company that wants to emulate this strategy of excellence in proprietary technology should take a hard look at their available competence and capabilities before attempting to implement it. For example, this might work in Sweden but I would be concerned about the lack of attention to detail and the lax work ethic that is prevalent in the Swedish workforce.

However, I do not believe in cultural determinism. Drawbacks can be overcome and firms in other countries can replicate the best parts of the success factors from the Mittelstands and the chuken kigyos.

At that time the copyright [...]]]> The conflict between the tech industry and the copyright lobby has been going on since the 1990s. The current controversy surrounding the EU Telecom Package is very similar to the fight that took place in 1999 when the EU Copyright Directive (2001/29/EC) was put to a vote in the EU Parliament.

At that time the copyright lobby (led by MEP Roberto Barzanti) almost succeeded in enacting an amendment (Article 5.1 ”on incidental copying”) that would have made ISPs legally responsible for cached copies of Internet traffic. These cached copies are stored for a thousandth of a second in the internet backbone routers during transport. Internet network operators would only be allowed to store cached content transported over the network if they had a pre-approval by the copyright holders.

Since all Internet traffic in transit jumps from one router to another in a random way, only traffic that is in some way guaranteed not to infringe copyright can be allowed. If an IP transfer crosses several national borders the traffic has to be legal in all intermediate steps.

This is copyright extremism at its finest: A “copyright crime” with a duration of a few microseconds which the network operator has no practical way of preventing without closing down the entire network.

The copyright lobby had mobilized enormous resources to influence the EU Parliament in 1999. The IT industry, Cisco, and the telcos were late to react and almost missed what was about to happen. Swedish Telia identified the threat early and played an active role in the counter campaign. Eventually one corporate lobby managed to stop another and the cached content amendment was rejected.

Now the conflict is repeating itself, both in the EU Telecom Package and in the way the copyright lobby is trying to expand the scope of the legal responsibility for copyright infringement. The copyright lobby’s strategy is to force telcos and web hotels to take full legal responsibility for traffic and content on their networks and servers.

The telcos have consistently resisted this and my prediction is that they won’t compromise a millimeter. They realize that if they begin to acknowledge legal responsibility for content, the floodgates will open for unlimited legal responsibility for everything that takes place on the Net.

This article has previously been published on my Swedish blog.