Visions of the future, from the early 20th century.

This article is based around a transcript of a segment from The Anthill 10: The Future, a podcast from The Conversation. Gemma Ware, society editor at The Conversation and a producer of The Anthill, interviewed Selena Daly, an expert on the Italian Futurists.

When the Italian journalist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti went off to the frontlines of World War I, he was thrilled to be pedalling there on a bicycle. Back in 1915, bikes were an avant-garde mode of transport and Marinetti was an avant-garde kind of guy. Hed made waves across Europe a few years earlier when he launched the Futurist Manifesto.

Selena Daly: Marinetti, who was a master at advertising and self-promotion, got the first manifesto published on the front page of the Paris daily newspaper Le Figaro in February of 1909. This really was a very bold launch of an artistic and cultural movement at this time and got a lot of attention also around the world.

Selena Daly is a lecturer in Italian studies at University College Dublin and an expert in the Italian Futurists. Marinettis vision of the future was built around high praise for technology and the aesthetics of modernity.

SD: So he praised in this manifesto the speeding automobile, steamships, locomotives. All of these technologies that perhaps to our eyes now may seem a little bit quaint but at that time were really at the cutting edge of technology. So very famously, Marinetti in that manifesto praised the speeding automobile as being more beautiful than the famous Greek sculpture the Winged Victory of Samothrace which stands in the Louvre then and still today.

It was a movement that began with literature and poetry and spread to sculpture, fine art, music and even textiles. For example, this 1921 piece called Fox-trot Futurist by an Italian composer, Virgilio Mortari, was influenced by the Futurists. Marinettis vision was as destructive and provocative as it was creative and forward-thinking.

SD: He felt that Italy as a country was completely weighed down by the baggage of the Renaissance and the baggage of ancient Rome and its classical past. And he really wanted Italy to just stop looking backwards always and instead look to what the future could offer them in terms of inspiration for art and literature. And in that first manifesto he says he wants to rejuvenate Italy which he found very stagnant and therefore he said that everyone should set fire to the libraries, flood the museums and in this way break all links with the past.

With World War I in the offing, Marinetti and his band of followers quickly agitated for Italy to join the fight. They felt that war would help bring their Futuristic vision into being.

SD: One of the most famous slogans that Marinetti coined was in that very first manifesto where he said that he praised war as the sole hygiene of the world. The idea there should be a purging war which would rid Italy and Europe of all of its obsession with the past and they could move forward to a brighter future.

It took nine months for Italys leaders to agree to join the war during which time the Futurists campaigned vigorously for intervention. When Italy did enter the war on the side of the Allies in May 1915, Marinetti and his group of fellow Futurists signed up as soon as they could.

SD: They were terribly excited by the bombardments. They found this to be an inspiration also for their art and in very many ways putting into practice what they had preached and what they had thought about and imagined in advance of World War I.

When the war ended in 1918, the Futurists went through an intense period of political engagement, forming the Futurist Political Party and forming a close alliance with Benito Mussolini and his Fascist movement. The Futurist party wanted to make Italy great again. They wanted a country that was no longer in servitude to its past where the only religion was the religion of tomorrow. Their manifesto promised revolutionary nationalism, and included ideas such as totally abolishing the senate and the gradual dissolution of the institution of marriage. A 1914 design by futurist architect Antonio Sant'Elia. Antonio Sant'Elia

SD: But in the end of 1919 there were Italian elections and the Futurists and the Fascists performed disastrously. So they received less than 2% of the vote in Milan and its at that point that Marinetti actually decides that parliamentary politics isnt for him and he withdraws. He disbands the Futurist political party and he withdraws completely from parliamentary politics because he feels disillusioned and he feels that the message that he has isnt getting through.

Post-1920, Futurism no longer goes down the parliamentary politics route but it was, after 1924, very closely aligned with Mussolinis Fascist movement. So while they may not have been engaged in parliamentary parties they were very much on the side of the Fascist regime and that didnt change at all during Marinettis lifetime.

Marinettis association with Fascism has tainted the Futurists legacy ever since.

SD: Obviously some Futurists distanced themselves from the movement because of this alignment with Fascism. But others didnt. Its interesting a lot of the art in the 1930s and some of the 1940s is what can be described as Fascist pro-regime art. There are a lot of portraits of Mussolini done in a Futurist style for example. And the Futurists, while they were never the official state art of Fascism because Mussolini never wanted to proclaim one art to be the state art of Fascism the Futurists were still featured at official events and did have this very strong alignment with Musssoinis regime at that time.

Marinettis allegiance to Mussolini went right up to his death in 1944 in Bellagio in the north of Italy, near to the puppet regime run by Mussolini towards the end of World War II.

SD: Because there was such a cult of personality also around Marinetti and he was really the focal point of the entire movement it did rather peter out at that stage after his death and then at the end of the war as well. So there were surviving Futurists who did try in the 1940s and 1950s to keep Futurism alive and there was an interest in Futurism most definitely, but it was tainted by Fascism and there was a reluctance in many circles to really address the Futurist art and Futurist literature on its merits because of the shadow of Fascism that was hanging over it.

Italys relationship with Futurism is still complicated, but some Futurist images have remained iconic.

SD: There is a sculpture of Boccioni, one of the most famous Futurist artists, actually featured on the Italian Euro 20 cents coin, just to give an indication of how important the Futurist aesthetic is to a vision of modern Italy today. Boccioni, died actually in 1916. He died under arms, he actually fell off his horse in training so he didnt have the glory of a battlefield death that he may have wished for because he was also very belligerent.

But he was never tainted by Fascism because he died before Fascism actually came into being. So therefore its much easier to place a Boccioni sculpture on a Euro coin in Italy because he doesnt really have those other connotations and other associations with Fascism.

And the Futurists did help shape the way others in the 20th century went on to imagine what the future could look like.

SD: The Futurist aesthetic had a very profound influence on the language of advertising for example in the 20th century. For example, BMW recently said that they were very much influenced by the Futurist aesthetic in the design of one of their cars. There are fashion houses that are still using Futurist prints and Futurist textiles to inspire their collections. There is still an affinity for the Futurist aesthetic even today.

So while Marinettis technological, streamlined vision of the future may have been born out of a specific political moment, it has continued to resonate. Even the generic use of the word Futurist today remains strongly connected to Marinettis vision from 1909.

Link:

How the Italian Futurists shaped the aesthetics of modernity in the ... - The Conversation UK

Posted: Mar. 2, 2017 11:30 am

QUINCY -- John McElligott says what he does for a living will one day be considered commonplace rather than futuristic.

McElligott is a self-described "technical futurist," someone who "reads all the different trends that are coming together" and how they apply and can help various industries.

The trends that McElligott deals with are centered on the potential impacts of "machine learning and artificial intelligence."

McElligott will deliver the keynote address for the inaugural Tri-State Manufacturing Conference for Illinois, Iowa and Missouri on March 15 at John Wood Community College.

McElligott is founder and CEO of York Exponential based in York, Pa. The company develops and leverages machine learning and artificial intelligence and produces and integrates collaborative robots designed to work alongside human workers in manufacturing.

"Embracing Disruption" will be the topic of McElligott's keynote speech, which will serve as a crash course about the opportunities to be found in emerging technologies that embrace robotics. McElligott will try to help manufacturers, related businesses and communities decipher the impact innovations will have on the future.

"All companies are soon going to have a (technical futurist), even though the position might go by another name," McElligott said.

He said emerging technology will soon be changing the face of industry by the month rather than by the year.

"Companies, even smaller ones, have to be able to understand trends and exponential growth," he said.

McElligott has worked extensively in what he calls "third-tier cities," those similar to Quincy with populations of about 40,000. He believes in the power of community networking through communication and technology and is a national speaker on exponential technology, robotics, artificial intelligence, economic development and disruption.

The conference will feature breakout sessions on supply chain/logistics, the talent pipeline, sales growth, market intelligence, technology adoption and leadership.

People attending the conference will have the opportunity to network and take part in a small-group discussion to learn how some manufacturers apply new technology in daily operations. Vendors also will display new technology and products.

The conference will take place 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at JWCC's Heath Center.

Cost for the conference is $45, including lunch. The event is open to leaders and employees from small- and large-size manufacturers, plus suppliers and related businesses in the industry. Registration details and more information are available at jwcc.edu/tristatemfg, or by contacting JWCC at 217-641-4971 or lewis@jwcc.edu.

See the article here:

'Technical futurist' will provide manufacturing conference keynote address - Herald-Whig

How futurism is becoming the newest business strategy and why it's important.

The technology market has been rapidly changing due to futurist ideas. Companies are investing money into technology that will safeguard their businesses for the future. Large businesses cannot prevent issues coming up in the near future, but hiring futurist experts will mitigate what is to come for them.

In 1980, Edward Cornish of the World Future Society gave some groundbreaking predictions. He made 29 predictions of what the future will look like, and 11 of them became reality. One of the first predictions he made was that there would be artificial hearts available for transplants, which came true a few years later. He predicted that the construction industry would mostly rely on automated machinery with minimal labor. Unfortunately, he also predicted that governments will struggle to distribute food and labor for the majority of workers.

Other experts in futurism agree that rapid technology changes are ruining certain businesses. Jobs are being lost around the world, and governments do not know how to cope with these changes. Both businesses and governments will need to study futurism in order to implement changes that safeguard their economies.

HR departments have been recruiting futurist experts to improve the efficiency of their departments. Futurists aid them in determining new skill sets that departments should be looking for to gain an edge in their industries.

Organizations like the Rockwell International Corporation have appointed their own teams to assess their goals of the future. These teams must analyze the climate of the market to determine what moves the company must take to still be alive in 10 years. The team will also assess multiple paths for the company to take for the predictions of many alternative futures.

Even small businesses can take advantage of following futurist ideas. Long-term trends will significantly impact the demand for small shops or services, and many businesses may even become irrelevant. When new technology is introduced to the marketplace, business owners should assess how they can take advantage of the new trend. If a new demographic is moving into certain neighborhoods, the local shops must conform to appeal to them. These are just a few basic examples of futurism.

Entrepreneurs of small businesses should focus on imagining what the customer will need in the near future. Focusing on small, short-term niches will assure a collapse of businesses after the niche dries up.

Becoming personally invested in a product is also a bad idea. Many products may not even meet the demands of the public. A good example is the hordes of forgotten projects on websites like Kickstarter.

Even simple gadget trends are changing the way technology businesses are going. The internet of things has made many companies shift toward internet connectivity in their devices. Refrigerators, video game consoles, televisions, doors, lights, toasters, ovens, coffee machines and other appliances have been conforming to IoT trends.

On the other hand, there is an overinvestment in certain technology gimmicks that draw away from more important things. Pagers were an obsession during the 1990s, but the market should have focused on expanding mobile phones instead. Answering machines are another device that was quickly made irrelevant due to the rapid changes in phone technology.

Hotels have also been adapting to the way the internet shifts the market. Online booking is practically a must, since the majority of bookers are finding the hotel from the internet. Airbnb certainly changes accommodation prices in many tourist areas, and prices may shift down or up. The future of travel accommodation is shifting toward alternative means, so hotels must figure out a way to mitigate this.

Technology marches on, and the needs of consumers will keep changing with it. Businesses should be doing everything they can to future-proof themselves as much as possible.

Image from Michael R. Ross/Shutterstock

Jason Hope

The rest is here:

Businesses Need Futurism to Stay Ahead - Business.com

Demographer Bernard Salt found himself at the centre of a storm late last year when millennials failed to see the irony in his remarks about their tendency to spend money on smashed avocado instead of saving for a house.

If anything, avogate underscored his serious point about the growing chasm between the generations, and the haves and the have-nots in our society.

Here the KPMG futurist shares his thoughts on what lies ahead.

HOME OWNERSHIP & HIPSTERS

I do see a divided community those who have bought into the property market and those who havent, for whatever reason.

I dont think Melbourne is any different from Manhattan Island, London or Paris.

Not everyone working in New York under the age of 35 has an expectation that they will be able to buy an apartment on Manhattan Island.

In Tokyo, in London, you accept the fact you rent.

On one hand we proudly say Melbourne is a global city, but that means the price of property rises because you are competing with people with global incomes. That then relegates locals further out.

The goats cheese curtain is moving. Bentleigh now has one of Melbournes hippest cafes. I mean Centre Road, Bentleigh, thats like east of Brighton. It might be that by 2025 the hipster zone extends to Burwood.

CHANGING OF THE GUARD

It might be that 2017 is a year of consolidation, but it strikes me there is a mood for change, whether that is political, which would come in 2018-19, or whether it is social or generational.

The avocado row simply triggered the festering resentment in a generation. I think a large proportion of the population, baby boomers and me included, was not aware of the extent of the sentiment.

I am concerned we are creating a double society. The old way, the old regime, the old logic is not meeting expectations. That was evident in 2016 with Trumpism and in Brexit. We would be foolhardy to say it does not affect us here.

BREAK POINT

There is a break point coming, when baby boomers will cede authority to a new generation, whether it is X or Y. The oldest baby boomers were born in 1946, so this year they are 71. The midpoint of the generation is pushing into their 60s.

It is time for this generation to move on and we are seeing that in budgets, in calls for higher superannuation and houses to be included in taxable assets for pension allocation. Baby boomers have circled the wagons.

At some point they must give way, youth must win out and I think what lies beyond 2017 is an Xand Y world.

E-CHANGE

Photo: iStock

Sea change morphed into tree change and the next iteration is e-change, where you take your job from the CBD and relocate to Daylesford or Torquay and do your job from there for at least part of the week.

Location is vital; you cant e-change in Nhill or Dimboola, you need to be within a reasonable distanceof Melbourne, but not necessarily on a dailycommute.

Those cute towns in the goldfields will be talking about Melbourne e-changers into the future.

ENTREPRENEURS RULE

More people will go to regional centres and start their own businesses. One of the strongest themes of the past two years has been small business development.

Its a combination of intellectual capacity being released into the market after the mining boom, and people in their late 50s and early 60s saying they are not ready to retire, and going into business for themselves.

MY TIME NOW

Photo: iStock

Bucket list thinking is driving a group I call MYTNs My Time Now. They have paid off the mortgage, the kids have left home and they are doing Rhine River and Alaskan cruises and having their kitchens made over.

At the extreme edge of MYTN philosophy, people are re-evaluating their relationships.

I think we will see a spate of de-partnering. Increasingly that decision will be made by women who have their own superannuation and income.

It might mean travelling or bushwalking with friends, because it is more engaging than sitting at home with someone who doesnt want to do anything.

The Next Five Years with Bernard Salt premieres onSky News Business on February 2 at9pm.

ALSO SEE

Originally posted here:

Trends this year & beyond with smashed avo futurist Bernard Salt - The Weekly Review

Individualisation is the future of marketing. I write this just after the holiday season when I have been eating too much, and not long after looking up a gym membership.

My inbox is now awash with pop-up ads sprouting weight-loss remedies. This is what I would call personalisation sending an email to a group of people (those who look for gym memberships for example) targeting similar products that might be of interest. Unfortunately, we are all becoming immune to this type of targeting.

The future of marketing, therefore, should be more about targeting on a more individual level. In the online age, many marketers seem to have forgotten about the consumer experience offline and this is what we need to focus on more in the future.

Big data is wonderful because it can tell us so much about our customers, but it is what we do with that data once we have it and how we use our creativity to bring it to life in the real world that will shape the future success of our marketing efforts.

For example, we might know that a certain guest likes a memory foam pillow, drinks espressos with soy milk, regularly orders a club sandwich and a red wine for dinner and always has a crime novel by their bedside. We could greet them with a soy milk espresso or send up a bottle of red wine to their room. This would be what you might call personalisation.

But what about if we went the next step and sent them a hand-written list of nearby wineries or the latest crime novel thats just been released. If we wanted to take it one step further, we could ask them to meet the executive chef to design their own club sandwich and add it to the menu or have their name sewn onto a memory pillow to take home with them. This is individualisation and is the perfect way to use our marketing skills to create magic for our guests.

We must all adapt our approach to individualisation. This is what todays demanding consumer expects. Millennials, especially, want to feel that you understand them and are speaking to them personally. They have a highly developed sense of self and want you to see them as an individual.

We must remember the average person receives over 5000 communication messages per day. It is increasingly difficult, then, to reach todays consumer so it is vital that you are targeting your messages to the individual and not just to a blanket group of like-minded people.

Technology allows us to drive more meaningful marketing, but it is how we use the data to target the individual that will make our marketing efforts stand out.

At AccorHotels, we use Local Measure to gain insights into their preferences and predict their future patterns. Local Measure uses local content, social media and mobile technology to provide live data to operationalise service at a local level.

This is the height of individualisation, because we can quickly learn that a certain guest is celebrating a birthday, for example, and then surprise them with a cake or gift. We can see if they are having issues with their rooms and immediately send someone to rectify them and we can start to understand the kind of activities they enjoy during their stay to individually suggest new services to them.

Again, it comes down to bringing the online data into an offline experience that is individually targeted. We also recently invested in John Paul, a concierge and CRM business, to better target our guests through individualisation.

Todays consumer demands you speak to them directly. For myself, if those companies sending me pop-up ads suggesting diets had targeted me individually, they would know I would be more interested in a triathlon in an inspiring destination than in a weight-loss solution and perhaps they would stop making me feel like I am fat! This is where individualisation will always win.

The author of the article is Michael Parsons, vice president of marketing and strategic relationships, Asia Pacific, AccorHotels.

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The Futurist: Individualisation is the future of marketing - Marketing Interactive

OMAHA, Neb.

The Greater Omaha Chamber, United Way of the Midlands and Urban League of Nebraska launched a collaboration Tuesday called Strategic 4Sight.

The three groups hired a futurist, Rebecca Ryan, with NEXT Generation Consulting out of Madison, Wisconsin. Through a series of workshops, Ryan will help identify where Omahas headed in the next 20 years and how to ensure a strong future in areas like economic growth, poverty and diversity.

Do some trend research. Try and figure out those things that are probably going to be happening over the next 20 years that will impact us as a community or impact the economy, David Brown, with the Greater Omaha Chamber, said. We have to figure out if those are really things that are going to be important to us and how were going to respond.

The three organizations hope by collaborating, theyll be able to put their minds together and focus on different issues.

"Some of them might fall in education, some of them might fall in race relations, some of them might fall in alleviating poverty, Brown said. So, areas where [the Greater Omaha Chamber doesnt] have mission, but United Way and Urban League do."

Ryan will present her findings in November. Before that happens, young professionals and community members are encouraged to attend workshops and give their input.

Ryan said Omaha is the first community to hire a resident futurist.

"We can be a receptive or a receiver of change, or we can be a causer of change, Brown said. I think this futurist piece enables us to kind of wake up in the morning and realize we're going to think about what's happening down the road. We're going to be prepared for it or we're going to cause it to happen."

The first workshop will focus on nonprofit leaders and is taking place at the Greater Omaha Chamber from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. If you wish to attend, you must register by contacting the chamber.

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'Strategic 4Sight' collaboration to path Omaha's future - KETV Omaha

Having been in marketing in various capacities over the past two over decades, I can safely say the function has evolved dramatically especially in the past few years. The change is of course largely attributed to the digital revolution which has closed the distance between brand and customer but with the multitude of channels of communication available also means the marketers job just got a lot more complex and to be effective, you will need to truly grasp integration.

Apart from that, transparency between brand and customer has definitely deepened and brands have huge opportunities today to differentiate if insights are well collected and analysed. These are the current realities, but what holds for the future of marketing? Here is my take:

1) Driver of change

Gone are the days where marketing is just a team that looks into advertising and media buys. Whilst that part of the job remains essential, the role of marketing certainly does not stop there. Today, the customer journey crosses so many departments, in U Mobile our customers journey runs through I.T. department for payment, to network for coverage quality to regulatory division for issues such as mobile parental control, so marketing is no longer just about ensuring good customer service in store or online, the function needs to adopt a more end to end mindset.

Ultimately, marketers are the ones with customers insights and hence are the ones who are able to support the rest of the divisions with the relevant information so that the customer journey will be seamless and consistent. I work very closely with the CTO to ensure networks are being rolled out at locations that matter to our customers. Before the new network is rolled out, I would have already had a conversation with the chief sales officer on sales strategy. Hence, to be an effective support and driver of customer related changes, marketers really need to be knowledgeable of the business and the priorities of the various divisions so that trust will be gained and cooperation achieved.

2) Make innovation central

Today product and service life cycles have shortened dramatically as customers are way more discerning. To build meaningful and impactful relationships with customers, brands really need to be one step ahead to provide for a need before the customer even acknowledges that need. A lot of my time is spent driving innovation, and aligning the innovation with the companys overall strategy and growth objectives. Moving ahead, innovation will need to move a lot faster and with greater frequency.

Competition can catch up really fast and so in order to innovate well, marketers need to mine data intelligently and by always asking the right questions.

3) Be data smart

In all my previous points, I mentioned the essential role of data and how it is the facts that will drive change and innovation. However, I am the first to admit that the sheer amount of data available today makes effective collection, analysis and application challenging. To ensure the data is well used, the marketer of the future will really need to be well versed in data analytics technologies and be clear on how to integrate the various technologies so that there will not be duplication of effort and results are not taken in isolation and solutions applied without context.

Marketers of the future will not only need to be a specialist in their field but they also play a critical role in connecting the dots throughout the organisation so that customers may have a truly satisfying end to end customer experience.

Much has indeed changed in the marketing world and landscape, but some things do remain, whether you are a marketer today or in 2025, you need to be passionate, gung ho, and enjoy being different and always bold. You can make a difference with data, but you can only make history if you tip it over with foresight.

The author of the article is Jasmine Lee, CMO,U Mobile Marketing Redefined

Excerpt from:

The Futurist: Marketing redefined - Marketing Interactive

This article is part of a new series exploring the skills leaders must learn to make the most of rapid change in an increasingly disruptive world. The first article in the series, How the Most Successful Leaders Will Thrive in an Exponential World, broadly outlines four critical leadership skillsfuturist, technologist, innovator, and humanitarianand how they work together.

Today's post, part two in the series, takes a more detailed look at leaders as futurists. Upcoming articles will explore leaders as technologists, innovators, and humanitarians.

Science fiction writer William Gibson famously once said, The future is already here, its just unevenly distributed. As leaders, how do we embrace the elements of the future that are here, and the ones that are just around the corner? By thinking more like a futurist.

In times of increasing change and complexity, it can be difficult to envision bold new futures with any certainty. Our go-to strategies for thinking about the future typically start with the elements that are known, such as projecting out historic results to future performance, analyzing existing competitors, or focusing on executing near-term results.

Whats missing are systematic approaches to understanding and taking advantage of the unknown. This is why leaders need to embrace skills, practices and behaviors of futurists.

Futurists dont have secret powers to predict the future. They dont have a Magic 8 Ball or special basket of fortune-cookie predictions. Rather, futurists discipline themselves to question the status quo. They regularly scan external trends, adjacent industries and underlying forces. They consider diverse perspectives. And they boldly tell stories about the future before all of the data is available to back it up.

Weve been trained to think of the future as a linear extension of what we know, typically imagining change as a 10 percent improvement (or decline) from what we see around us.

We think we have a better understanding of the future than we do. Our implicit views about the future are so ingrained in business plans, financial models, and strategy conversations that leaders often dont take the time to articulate underlying assumptions. When they do, they may discover plans rely on variables that are far from given and perhaps not the only options.

The future lives in a very broad set of possibilities, and these can unfold surprisingly quickly.

Technological, environmental and political changes will likely disrupt your business. How can you prepare for a different, even unimaginable world that will arrive faster than projected?

This is where methods commonly employed by futurists can help you strengthen your plans. Disciplined methods of strategic foresight systematically scan, analyze, probe and project the future beyond what we intuitively think might be possible.

The first step is identifying the most important and uncertain macro forces shaping your business. These can usually be divided into five broad categories: social, technological, economic, environmental and political. (Tip: Recall these with the acronym STEEP.)

Under each of these categories, there are a number of driving forces and external variables that might lead to very different futures.

An insurance company, for example, might track variables related to the extension of human life (social), technologies disrupting treatment of chronic health conditions (technology), the rate of change from traditional employer-driven work arrangements to more independent gig jobs (economic), the frequency and impact of natural disasters (environmental), and the governments stance toward regulation and potential new laws (political).

Once these high-impact variables are identified and prioritized, futurists gather diverse inputs to establish a range of how the variables are likely to play out over time. The further ahead they go, the wider the range of possibilities.

Futurists call this the cone of possibilitiesand carefully organize their forecasts into four buckets.

Although these futures stem from a common set of identified variables, the derived outcomes are significantly different.

This can be an enlightening strategic exercise for leaders: Is your organization overemphasizing its preferred future and neglecting the full range of possible futures? If so, perhaps there isnt enough hedging of investments. Does your organization default to the plausible future? Consider broadening the view by investigating new technologies, adjacent industries and early startups to inform alternative strategic options.

Paul Saffo, Singularity Universitys Chair of Futures Studies and Foresight, repeatedly warns us that sacred cows make the best burgers. A quick way to make your organization more future-focused is by asking team members to dive into their networks and scout for evidence related to the key variables youve outlined and post them on an analog or digital wall.

Once youve identified your preferred future, you can start to identify key activities and milestones that would help create that future.

Backcasting is the act of imagining a preferred future and then stepping backward toward the present, repeatedly probing what has to happen to enable each step.

Backcasting is anchored in an aspirational future state rather than being constrained by limitations of the current state. This allows people to create their own richly detailed stories of the future and leads naturally to the discussion: How can our product/service do that?

To dream up bold, new possibilities, try imagining an outcome 10 times better, cheaper, or more impactful than what exists today. What if, for example, we all had access to personalized artificial intelligence wellness care providers through emotional robots? Or what if the majority of our transportation services were provided by autonomous vehicles?

Now step backward from each vision to discover whats needed to turn it into reality.

Like forecasting, backcasting can be improved by seeking diverse input. For example, consider carving out a few hours in a company-wide meeting to craft headlines from the future. Just a few hours of collaboration can spark new thinking and ignite fresh ideas. Such exercises can also fuel interdisciplinary engagement and encourage a sense of collective responsibility.

Dont be afraid to get creative and even ditch the PowerPoint slides. Lowes Innovation Labs director Kyle Nel uses narrative driven innovation to imagine new futures. To jumpstart his efforts, Nel brought in science fiction writers and illustrators to create comic books that showcased possible alternatives stretching far beyond smaller, incremental changes, helping the company's leadership concretely imagine and visualize the Lowes store of the future.

One of the most challenging aspects of practicing the skills of a futurist is getting comfortable with the reality that we simply cannot predict the future. For many senior leaders, this is deeply unsettling. How can we possibly make big bets on the future without all the facts and data?

Most of us are uncomfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. Boldly looking ahead elicits doubt, fear, and anxiety emotions wed rather hold in check. We can learn to overcome our discomfort with the unknown, and even begin to revel in it, by continuously pushing ourselves to learn new things and seek out new experiences and people.

We are all capable of becoming better futurists. In doing so, we not only architect hope of new possibilities, we also build more flexible, adaptive and resilient organizations in the process.

Image Credit: Zoe Brinkley

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How Leaders Dream Boldly to Bring New Futures to Life - Singularity Hub

AWESTRUCK WITH JASON SILVA

Think Inc. Present: Awestruck with Jason Silva Thursday June 15, ASB Waterfront Theatre Tickets available now from Eventfinda

We are gods. Our tools make us gods. In symbiosis with our technology, our powers are expanding and so, too, our possibilities.

In June 2017 Think Inc., in association with AUT, Loop and National Geographic Channel, are excited to bring to New Zealand, for the first time, futurist and explorer of the metaphysics of imagination, Jason Silva. Described as a modern performance philosopher, Silva is set to expound on the power of science, technology, philosophy and creativity in Auckland as he challenges creativity, innovation, the co-evolution of human and technology, existentialism and the human condition.

Awestruck with Jason Silva will see Silva pull from a vast mental repository of tech knowledge to create an exhilarating, immediate experience. A self-described wonder junkie, performance philosopher, and idea-DJ, Silva has gained a huge following for his popularising takes on philosophy and the thrilling possibilities of creativity and technology. Futurist and epiphany addict, Silva likes ideas, their tenacity, flexibility, their contagious nature, their impact and their ability to expand, procreate and evolve into new ideas.

As the Emmy-nominated host of National Geographic Channels #1 rated and Emmy-nominated series Brain Games, Silva left audiences in state of wonderment, and has been responsible for a number of Ted talks. Like all the best communicators, Silvas strength is a tangible excitement for his subject matter.

Silva is the creator of the short film series Shots of Awe, which serves up invigorating shots of philosophical espresso in a format designed to be short, infectious and easily spread - think of them as inspired nuggets of techno-rapture. In the collection of videos, Silva invites audiences to share his glee in the rising and wondrous role of technology in amplifying intelligence and creativity.

We use our tools to extend our range of possibilities, we use our tools to extend our reach, to extend the impact on our consciousness, to extend our will. Technology is the human imagination turned inside out.

In June, let Think Inc. and Jason Silva pull you out of your intellectual comfort zone and launch you into a flight of possibilities.

Think Inc. Present: Awestruck with Jason Silva Brought to you by AUT, Loop & National Geographic Thursday June 15, ASB Waterfront Theatre

Doors 6:30pm / Show: 7.30pm / Ends 9.30pm

Tickets available now from EventfindaFor more info, head to Think Inc.

Scoop Media

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Futurist Jason Silva Brings 'Awestruck' To NZ This June - Scoop.co.nz (press release)

A week after Michael Flynns abrupt fall from grace, President Trump will smooth things over with a national security adviser that at least some people can agree on.

Called everything from a warrior scholar to the rarest of soldiers,, Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster is an about-face from the divisive Flynn, who resigned amid the escalating controversy over his contact with Sergey Kislyak, Russian ambassador to the U.S.

McMaster, often described as the armys own futurist, holds a complex view on technology, cautioning against technological hubris as a solution to modern warfare. Be skeptical of concepts that divorce war from its political nature, particularly those that promise fast, cheap victory through technology, McMaster wrote in a 2013 op-ed in the New York Times titled The Pipe Dream of Easy War. He continued:

Wars like those in Afghanistan and Iraq cannot be waged remotely. Budget pressures and persistent fascination with technology have led some to declare an end to war as we know it. While emerging technologies are essential for military effectiveness, concepts that rely only on those technologies, including precision strikes, raids or other means of targeting enemies, confuse military activity with progress toward larger wartime goals.

That same characteristic deep perspective appears to be on display in his controversial but largely well-respected book, Dereliction of Duty, about the failing of military leaders, particularly theJoint Chiefs of Staff, during the Vietnam war. McMasters academic streak is just one of the traits that paints him in stark contrast to Flynn, who is widely regarded as ideologically driven, particularly by anti-Islamic sentiment.

During an April 2015 symposium on Army innovation, McMaster expanded on the risk inherent in an overreliance on military technology.The biggest risk that we have today is the development of concepts that are inconsistent with the enduring nature of war, McMaster said. What we see today is really an effort to simplify this complex problem of future war and to essentially make it a targeting exercise. The idea is that the next technology we develop is going to make this next war fundamentally different from all those that have gone before it.

At a defense conference in London a few months later, McMaster emphasized that traditional manpower cant be ignored in favor of flashy technological advances that appear to provide short-term gains. [There is a] delusion that a narrow range of military technologies will be decisive in future war, he said. Technology is the element of our differential advantage over our enemies which is most easily transferred to our enemies.

McMaster is no technophobe, but he dismisses conceptions of the future of war that cut against wars political nature, wars human natures, wars uncertainty and war as a contest of wills.

Notably, he also really, really hates PowerPoint. Its dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control, McMaster told the New York Times. Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable. (Good luck telling that to the commander-in-chief.)

Its too early to tell how McMaster will fit into Trumps roiling inner circle, or perhaps the outermost circle of his concentric inner circles, but McMasters willingness to critique authority around issues of national security is likely to prove relevant.

As Middle East scholar and former U.S. Army officer Andrew Exum writes in the Atlantic:

One thing that stands out in the book is the way in which McMaster criticized the poorly disciplined national security decision-making process in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and especially the way in which the Kennedy administration made national-security decisions by a small group of confidants without a robust process to serve the president.

Its not hard to imagine howthe Armysbig picture thinkermightextend that criticismto a president who prefers to craftdecisionsthrougha small clusterof loyalists, incorporating little outside input. It remains to be seen if Trump will bring McMaster fully into the fold or if hell just freeze him out like so many other administration officials who have expresseddissent.

Whatever role he ends up playing, McMaster will joinDefense Secretary James Mattis and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly to round out the trifecta of well-respected military leaders who have Trumps ear.

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Trump's new national security adviser is a futurist with warnings about technology - TechCrunch

The world is moving away from fossil fuels towards renewable energies, and Alberta risks being left behind, says futurist Nikolas Badminton, whose presentation kicks off the Growing the North conference at the Entrec Centre on Wednesday.

Badminton is a Vancouver-based futurist, someone who makes predictions about how technology will shape the future. He says a big shift to renewable energy over the next 10 to 15 years will make fossil fuels far less important, adding Alberta needs an entrepreneurial ethos to adapt to the change.

Albertas sort of lagging behind in this vision of renewables, and I think in a province where youve got over 300 days of sunshine per year, were sort of missing an opportunity for creating an abundance of energy, Badminton said in an interview.

He points out that 51% of Albertas energy is still generated by coal and 39% by natural gas, while hydro and wind only account for 2% and 5%, respectively. In B.C., on the other hand, 90% of power is hydro-generated.

According to Badminton, the beginning of the great shift away from fossil fuels is already evident. Last year Tesla Motors announced it was planning to produce 500,000 all-electric vehicles in 2018, two years ahead of schedule. And Ford announced last month it is launching a fully electric SUV by 2020, as well as 13 new electrified vehicles over the next five years including hybrid F-150s and Mustangs. By 2023, Badminton said, battery-powered cars will be the same price as combustion-engine cars.

The disruption is here.

Its happening in agriculture too, he added: John Deere has just come out with a prototype electric vehicle. I think we can see farming going all electric in the next few years. And last November Alaska Airlines flew the first commercial flight with a renewable biofuel.

Badminton says Alberta should be channelling its talent towards innovation, thinking about technology startups ... Theres such a huge branch of talent in Calgary, Edmonton and across the province that I think it could become a huge innovation centre.

In addition to shifting towards renewables, Badminton endorses the circular economy, an idea advocated by The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a think tank. The concept envisions a world without junk yards; consumer products would be designed to be disassembled, once theyre no longer wanted, so that their materials can be re-used. Things that have to be thrown away, such as packaging, would be compostable.

However, Badminton acknowledged such a massive transformation of the economy would be unlikely to happen without government intervention.

Without these incentives, without certain regulations in place to actually start to force the change, the change is slow to come.

Badmintons talk starts at 8:45 a.m.

khampson@postmedia.com

Twitter @kevinhampson

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Renewable energy will displace oil and gas: Futurist - Alberta Daily Herald Tribune

Children are insane. Or, more precisely, they don't think logically as adults do. Children aren't burdened by hardened adult preconceptions and expectations, so suffer fewer roadblocks to learning new things. This different way of seeing things is why children adapt so easily to high tech that confuses the rest of us.

That's the theoretical basis behind "Mimsy Were The Borogoves," a classic science fiction tale from 1943 in which two children find a box of toys from the future that they totally grok but which flummox their Euclidian-conditioned parents. (You can read "Mimsy" here or watch the movie version, The Last Mimzy.)

Could we be approaching the unidentified future from which Mimsy's high tech toys originated?

At the annual Toy Fair, held this past President's Day weekend in New York city, I found some playthings instilled with bleeding edge technologies even I barely understand but that today's youngsters should have no trouble taking to just like the children in "Mimsy" hopefully, without the story's strange consequences.

For instance, there was a futuristic version of one of the most iconic toys of all time Barbie. Mattel showed off Hello Barbie Hologram, which is sort of a personalized 3D animated Amazon Alexa.

You can ask Hello Barbie Hologram Alexa-like questions, prefaced by "Hello, Barbie," such as for the weather. But instead of Stephen Hawking-like monotone responses, you get an effervescent Barbie not only playfully announcing the local outdoor conditions, but you get a visual; for instance, if Barbie tells you it's raining cats and dogs, you get a holographic visual of canines and felines pouring from the sky. You can voice command the hologram Barbie to set alarms, night lights and daily reminders. You can also change hologram Barbie's size and skin tone and ask her to perform a number of dances.

Hello Barbie Hologram will be available sometime this fall for less than $300.

VR has been popping up in a few toys in the last couple of years, but at Toy Fair I saw three unique applications that seem to more holistically integrate VR into the design of the toy rather than haphazardly tacked on.

A start-up called Tilt is advancing "textile tech" in its SpinTales, which uses a duvet, a rug and VR to, well, put a new spin on some old stories for children. The SpinTales app includes three stories: Little Red (as in Little Red Riding Hood), 3 Pigs (as in the Three Little Pigs) and Magic Beans (as in Jack and Beanstalk). You then buy either the SpinTales Enchanted Duvet or the throw Jungle Rug ($99.99 each).

Your child activates one of the games on their smartphone or tablet and picks different activities. When prompted, the child then holds the tablet or smartphone over a matching section on the duvet or rug to activate the 3D VR, which displays an exploration of the immediate vicinity as the character moves around.

What makes SpinTales fascinating is that the bedspread and throw rug are ever-present; they don't have to dug out of a closet or toy chest or located under a pile of other discarded toys, dirty clothes or the bed.

One of the more fascinating VR games I saw isn't a product you'll be able to buy, but a "mixed reality game" technology concept that combines VR and RFID from a Quebec-based developer, bkom Studios. You move physical RFID-equipped tokens around a board; each token then generates a VR character that can be seen on the corresponding app on a smartphone or tablet or a more 360-degree view through VR goggles. Scanning playing cards triggers each character's activities.

bkom hopes to sell the technology for game developers to create new VR/RFID games.

A mixed reality learning VR plaything you soon will be able to buy is "Animal World with Jessica" from Odyssey ($39.95, April/May). Inside the smart box the cover acts as an interactive VR game board includes 65 VR animal cards, VR goggles, eight coloring paper sheets and a combined smartphone/tablet holder.

After downloading the "Animal World" app, a child holds a card so the smartphone or tablet camera can see it, which activates a moving, interactive VR version of that animal viewed on either a touchscreen device or more fully through the VR goggles. The animal can be manipulated while information about it is imparted to the child. Two animals can be created to interact with each other, or your child can switch the camera view and take a selfie with the animal.

At some point, the "Animal World" developers hope to update the app so children will be able to virtually feed the animals as well as talk to them ala Dr. Doolittle. Additional mixed reality educational card sets with different topics are planned.

A plethora of companies have been developing simplistic robot toys and robot learning and construction kits for the last few years. But Fisher-Price has built instead an inexpensive version of a home robot designed to help your youngest kids learn while playing.

The company's cute, nearly foot-tall Teach n' Tag Movi ($49.99, fall) is an interactive learning buddy that can follow directions, play games and displays animated facial expressions that help give it a personality. It can roll around via voice command on three wheels on nearly any surface.

Movi, which will operate on three C cells and is designed for youngsters 3-6, includes three play modes: Alpha Fun Actions, Think & Move Shapes and Learn & Play Games including Red Light/Green Light and Silly Sounds Tag. Two buttons on top of Movi allow for a child's direct input.

Not quite Isaac Asimov's Robbie, the first robot presented in his "I, Robot" collection, another, more optimistic look at our robot buddy future, but getting there.

Hopefully, these robot, VR and hologram toys won't cause the mischief the sci-fi playthings do in "Mimsy," but merely prepare your prodigy for life in their non-fictional future.

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Futurist Sci-Fi Toys Are Here Now | The Huffington Post - Huffington Post

As the world gets excited about the possibilities that VR unfolds for all of us in the business of marketing brands, Im reminded of the golden adage: People will forget what you did, but theyll never forget how you made them feel.

Yes, emotions are back in business and today they are becoming even more measurable in real-time. As the buzz on building smarter cities and a smarter life gains momentum, one can expect technology to play a larger role in driving marketing engagements.

We expect to see more IOT and tech-enabled conversations driving B2B and B2C relationships. Marketers will be expected to find compelling narratives to better emote and engage with customers. As such, leading global telcos and tech brands are converging their products, services and infrastructure to create a more immersive and pronounced engagement with customers.

Marketing beyond VR

Sure, newfangled tech and nifty platforms, such as AR, VR, wearables and apps do help take the brand experience narrative forward, but often they dont necessarily form the narrative itself. This is a reason why more and more marketers have started investing increasingly in collaborative commerce platforms and experience centres.

Collaborative commerce platforms are fast becoming a new model of marketing engagement especially with IT and telco corporations. Brands are increasingly involving their member/customer base in not just running campaigns, but the business itself.

The active advocacy and emotional ownership that such engagements presents are tough to match through conventional social/digital marketing routes. Brand experience centres are not your flagship stores and they dont substitute for the experience. Today, brands from across industries are investing significantly in building their marquee experience centres.

While the wave of customer experience centres started as an effective way to engage B2B customers, with the likes of British Telecom and VADS back home inviting its prospects to come and experience how they could help solve complex real-life business issues in real time, the marketing practice has caught the fancy of non-tech companies as an opportunity to immerse and excite the public in the types of possibilities it creates.

Companies from across the industry spectrum are actively engaging in creating mini experience centres to immerse target segments.

The digital paradox for marketers

Organisations are busy bucking up their respective digital transformation journey. While it will ease the pressure of marketing in organising, managing and serving various customer segments, invariably it will make it increasingly tougher for brands to connect emotively with their customers in the digital age.

However, on the other hand, brands such as Amazon have effectively created a well thought out customer gratification model that keeps its emotive connect intact. In fact, the brand for the first time in its history has gone from a pure click to a brick and mortar model with physical stores in countries such as India.

Underscoring the realisation that marketing in the digital age will increasingly rely on creating immersive brand experiences be they physical, virtual or collaborative in nature.

Yes, advancements in tech be they AR, VR, bots, wearables or 3D printing will serve as effective special effects, but the narrative will need to rely on telling an effective story that engages all the five senses, which creates memorability, talkability and shareability beyond likes and views.

The author of the article is Izlyn Ramli, vice-president, group brand and communication Telekom Malaysia.

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The Futurist: Making an emotional connection | Marketing Interactive - Marketing Interactive

In 'Back To The Future', Marty and Doc travel in time from 1985 to 2015. In the fictional version of 2015 there's hoverboards and self-lacing shoes. While the latter happened IRL in late 2016, a lot of the film's other future predictions were a little off.

Though what's not too far fetched is the idea of robots, or artificial intelligence, working its way into our very real and ordinary lives in the not too distant future. Self-driving cars are already a thing, and that's only the beginning.

"Artificial Intelligence (or AI) is likely to do to white collar jobs like how machines have been doing blue collar work. In other words, just like our brawns have been digitised, so will our brains be," Anders Sorman-Nilsson, global futurist and TEDx speaker told The Huffington Post Australia.

Sorman-Nilsson is the author of Seamless: The Futurephile's Guide To Leading Digital Adaptation And Human Transformation. His book explores how life and business will change in the future and what can be done now to best adapt to that. A futurephile refers to someone who is open and excited about technology in the future, while a futurephobe is someone who is frightened of it.

"What we should more concerned about is not necessarily the exponential change in artificial intelligence or robotics, but about the stagnant response in human intelligence. For example, schools and universities are now preparing students for jobs that will no longer be in existence 10 years from now.

"On the flip side, adaptive, agile and creative humans will figure out how to partner with the machines and new forms of intelligence. For example, we can imagine a near future where Siri stops behaving emotionally unintelligently and instead fully replaces your executive assistant, marketing manager, and sales support," Sorman-Nilsson said.

Sorman-Nilsson says that while artificial intelligence will run the back office of your business, it is unlikely to be the front of your brand.

"Neo-luddites [those who are considered to be anti-technology] who prefer apathy, complacency or nostalgia will try to fight this next evolution of digital disruption, and will likely be left behind. Anything that can be digitised will eventually be digitised, so a key question for anyone seeking to scenario plan their future career to ensure their thinking remains attractive in 2027 is: what thinking skills can never be digitised?"

"Fundamentally human skills like entrepreneurship, strategic thinking, philosophy, team-building, creativity, empathy, emotionally intelligent leadership, counter-intuitive insights, and connected sales(wo)manship will have a premium placed upon them. In other words, less time pushing paper and doing menial stuff, and more time doing meaningful stuff," Sorman-Nilsson said.

"We do a lot of scenario planning with banks, which in many ways are really just technology companies with banking licenses. So, yes, in a cashless, paperless and seamless banking future, a lot of banking jobs will be lost to automation and artificial intelligence," Sorman-Nilsson said.

"What our simulations show is that one aspect to the debate around artificial intelligence that is frequently lost is the fact that AI and digitisation will impact certain activities in our everyday lives, such as marketing automation or robotic advice, but it may not fully remove the 50 percent of jobs that some pundits talk about. In the face of this, as humans we need to be a little paranoid about the exponential changes ahead -- enough so to move us into upgrading our thinking -- but not so much as to be paralysed."

Probing Sorman-Nilsson on if us laypeople should be afraid of this future, he says it all comes down to how we think.

"I see a correlation between what I term 'futurephobes' in my most recent book, who tend to posses a general technophobia which includes deep suspicion of artificial intelligence, and dystopic views of that same future. Disruption is a signal from the future that it is high time to adapt, and that smart investments in the right hardware and software, which includes your own thinking software, have to be made."

"To me it is astounding that in Australia we are so obsessed with bricks and mortar property, but we are less concerned with investments in our own intellectual property, and AI certainly raises the stakes to ensure our thinking remains future-compatible. If you think like a 'futurephile' you will see that AI will free up our time to do meaningful work -- a sales professional, rather than spending 30 to 40 percent of their day doing data-entry, can fit in more meaningful meetings with humans, and a financial adviser can focus on more actively helping their clients' fulfil their financial dreams by outsourcing some regulatory work to RegTech instead," Sorman-Nilsson said.

"While my mum, who is my toughest pro-bono client, tends to think of the future as digitally dehumanised, for a futurephile like myself, the future holds the promise of an even more human era," Sorman-Nilsson said.

"A future where we can connect more deeply with our loved ones because we are no longer punching spreadsheets. One where our artificially intelligent assistant locks in the most optimal price and payment terms for our family holidays based on our unique psychographics, budgets and interests while we sleep, and where we are freed up to meditate or rejoin the local football club because we are delivered from the stress of pointless paperwork and meaningless visits to the post office to prove our identities."

Sorman-Nilsson says that artificial intelligence will excel in the fields of big data -- like diagnosis, investment advice, personalised medicine, smart buildings, energy management, transport, logistics, engineering and accounting.

"This will mean that your 'left brain' might get some much needed support, while your 'right brain' will be able to flourish. But while the promise of AI is exciting, it will take a really good human sales(wo)man to make us really trust and buy into artificial intelligence."

In his role as a futurist, Sorman-Nilsson is looking forward to what's to come.

"As a global futurist and futurephile, one of the things that excites me about artificial intelligence is the death of procrastination -- anything 'left brained' that we avoided and delayed doing, like taxes, filing, travel expense coding, receipt management, and updating our calendars will be procrastinated on no longer. That in and of itself should sell you on the virtue of AI -- unless you of course derive a lot of pleasure from these activities, in which case I urge you to upgrade and diversify your thinking," Sorman-Nilsson said.

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Will Artificial Intelligence Take Our Jobs? We Asked A Futurist - Huffington Post Australia

In darker corners of the internet there are growing communities of alt-right meme-machines mocking liberals and advocating white supremacy. However, recently another facet of the movement has emerged: fashwave, the musical genre where 80s electronica meets fascism.

Fashwave is essentially a subgenre of vapourwave, a creation of the early 2010s characterised by its slowed-down, lo-fi 80s A E S T H E T I C accompanied by images inspired by early computing technology and TV advertisements, simultaneously rebuking and embracing capitalist alienation. Its proximity to the latter is that at first listen you might not even realise you were hearing the product of a white nationalist (although titles such as Right Wing Death Squads and Team White do tend to give it away).

Fashwave effectively encapsulates a particular aspect of the Zeitgeist. With the roaring success of nostalgia-drenchedStranger Things last year, and the rapid rise of the political right, it is perhaps not so bizarre that the two would join forces to form the hybrid phenomenon. Indeed, one supporter declared on Twitter that what binds white nationalists together is a belief in the supremacy of the 1980s. It seems that the decade holds a special place in the hearts of alt-right members, who remember (or at least regard) it fondly as the last days of white America.

The genre is a very new one, born in the wake of the Paris terror attacks in November 2015. Leading fashwave artist Cybernazi said in an interview last year that his music was inspired by the horror the event instilled in him. This influence is evident genre-wide, with Xuriouss (another leading fashwave producer) oldest song entitled Requiem for Paris.

Leading alt-right figures have championed fashwave, describing it as the movements soundtrack. Of these the most well-known is probably Richard Spencer, the man who recently went viral for being punched in the face during the Washington DC street protests on the day of President Trumps inauguration in the middle of explaining his affinity with Pepe the Frog. The video has been repeatedly remixed online, meaning that you can now watch as Spencer is hit in time to the opening drum machine bars of New Orders Blue Monday.

Ironically, New Order is one of his favourite bands (alongside Depeche Mode) and is apparently a big influence of this new electronic genre. New Orders name has long attracted controversy and allegations of Nazi sympathies, all of which have been dismissed by its members. However, in an interview with VICEs music channel THUMP, Spencer said he thought the 80s legends were consciously or unconsciously channelling [] something darker, more serious, maybe more authoritarian.

This adoption of popular culture by fascists is nothing new. It is not even the first time this kind of music has been used the Swedish far right hijacked this particular vein of 1980s synth-pop when it was contemporary. However, this is the first time support has been so seemingly concentrated on one genre. Historically punk and other musical movements have attracted a fascist following, but far right supporters in the 21st century say that these forms are dead, and that self-produced electronic music as the artistic expression of the millennial generation is the natural fit.

Modern day far-right producers still acknowledge their historical influences however. Cybernazi described fashwave as the direct heir of Futurism, and it is not difficult to see why. Futurism was an artistic movement which came out of Italy in the early 20th century, in the days of Mussolini. The genre was inspired by the great technological advances happening at that time and the violence of war.

Nowadays, instead of trains and automobiles, fascist musicians are inspired by the creative possibilities of big data and the infinite virtual world of the internets capacity to bring people together. As with the alt-right movement as a whole it is easy to get caught up in the sensation and lose sight of the true scale of fashwaves popularity. Although the concept of fashwave is attention-grabbing, its listeners can really only be found in a very select niche of the internet. Even its most popular songs have only around 50 thousand views on YouTube. The movement is undoubtedly growing; there is no denying that. But all things considered you are unlikely to stumble across it in the soundtrack to the next Stranger Things instalment any time soon.

Image: Terri Po

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Fashwave: the far-right phenomenon with Futurist forefathers - The Student

Campaigners hoping to save the Futurist Theatre in Scarborough from demolition have vowed to fight a decision that prevents the building being listed.

As reported by The Stage in January, campaigners had hoped that an application from the council to make the building immune from listing would be rejected by the government. A certificate of immunity from listing means the venue could not be statutorily listed for a period of five years and could therefore be demolished.

Scarborough Council approved 4 million of funding to demolish the theatre earlier this year. Although there are no plans for a replacement development, theme park Flamingo Land has previously expressed an interest in the site.

Historic England, which oversees the listing of buildings, confirmed to The Stage the government was minded to approve a certificate of immunity from listing for the Futurist in Scarborough on the advice of Historic England.

Nick Bridgland, listing team leader in the north said: We realise that there is much local interest in and affection for the Futurist. We carefully assessed the Futurist for listing and advised that because the building has been extensively altered over the years, it does not have the special historic or architectural interest to meet the criteria for national listing.

There will now be a statutory period of 28 days to allow for review, after which a final decision will be made by the government.

Responding, the Theatres Trust said it was considering appealing the move.

Local support for the building has grown strong over the last few months and campaigners are continuing to battle to save the Futurist. We support the Save the Futurist campaign group and other stakeholders who would like to see the Futurist Theatre restored for cultural use, it said.

It added: [The Futurist] could provide a large-scale theatre for the presentation of musicals, comedy, music and drama in Yorkshire, thanks to its capacity and flytower, and would be an immense cultural and economic benefit to the people of Scarborough.

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Scarborough's Futurist loses battle for listing to prevent demolition - The Stage

The internet has profoundly changed the way we live, work and play. People are more connected than ever thanks to smartphones, tablets and laptops. These digital devices provide mobility and convenience, and as a result the nature of content consumption has changed.

Studies have shown the average attention span is a mere eight seconds even shorter than goldfish. The proliferation of devices and platforms has also fragmented the playing field for marketeers. Brands are being challenged to connect with their customers through all these devices, on demand, in real-time and seamlessly. Yet many brands have responded by using spray and pray advertising, which results in the incoherent clutter we see today.

It is now harder for marketers to cut through the distraction and make any lasting impact on consumers. Consumers have a low tolerance for these blasts of information. Faced with an onslaught of competing messages, consumers have become more selective of the content they choose to engage with. They are also more sceptical of branded messaging and celebrity endorsements, instead choosing to believe people like you and me ordinary people who they can relate to and see as peers.

Consumers today are yearning for unique and meaningful experiences with brands. A recent study by Havas found that brands that created meaning for their customers were rewarded with loyalty and increased sales. However, creating meaningful and lasting relationships with customers is synonymous with marketing, and is nothing new. In this digital age, the why of marketing and brand strategy remains unchanged, while the how needs to be overhauled to ensure brands continue to be relevant.

With this new reality in mind, many brands have turned to content marketing to better connect with their audiences.

A paradigm shift

In the past, Shell was perceived as functional and premium, but also distant and cold. To shake off this perception, in 2015 the brand embarked on a three-year transformational programme Welcome to Shell to humanise the brand and redefi ne its purpose.

We found that culturally relevant, human interest stories that inspire, inform or entertain seemed to gain traction among Malaysians. The brand softened its marketing strategy by moving away from product-centric messaging to purpose-led, audience-driven content. We manifested our brand purpose in all content that we published.

In summary

The digital disruption has changed the way we marketeers must respond to consumers, and increasingly brands are moving towards becoming content publishers. In Shells case, we developed audience-first content to help us deliver value and emotional engagement to our customers.

Our primary objective was to attract attention and gain trust, which then allowed us to re-target those customers who had engaged with our content to other aspects of the brand.

However, there is no one-size-fi ts-all approach, and brands will need to fi nd out what strategies work best for them by testing and learning. The good news is there is a wealth of digital tools to help brands understand their audience better, and develop better quality content that suits them. Marketeers can also easily conduct pilot studies on digital platforms to test concepts and tweak campaigns before they go live on a bigger scale.

The key is not about creating a large amount of content, but creating quality content that will create a maximum impact with target audiences, so they keep coming back for more.

The author of this article is Ben Mahmud, head of retail marketing, Shell Malaysia

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The Futurist: Content publishing the new marketing - Marketing Interactive

10:05 Monday 13 February 2017

Londons futurist duo The Alpines Bob Matthews and Catherine Pockson describe their music as a meeting in the middle between them.

We have been together since 2010, says Catherine as they head out on a tour which takes them to The Prince Albert, Brighton on February 22. We actually met at a wedding of a mutual friend of ours. Bob was playing in the band at the wedding. He was part of an indie band before we became The Alpines. I was doing a lot of my own stuff at the time, solo stuff, and we wrote some stuff together. We got quite a lot of interest after one or two shows in London, and we got signed quite quickly after that. Its funny how it works out.

As for the name: One of the first trips we did was taking a road trip down to the Alps. We made a lot of CDs and mix tapes and put them in the car and discussed a lot of music and influences. It was quite a formative thing for us. And the Alps are just one of the most beautiful places. We wanted a good name, and Alpines are plants that grow on the higher reaches of mountains and are pretty hardy. We thought it would be a good name. We come from very different musical backgrounds. I come from a more soul, jazz, r n b upbringing, and Bob was more indie, electronic and rock. One of his favourite bands is The Beatles, so our music is like a merging of our quite different backgrounds. I would describe it as intimate and quite soulful, but with quite a wide soundscape. There is width to it. We wanted to make music that was emotional and honest.

Bob agrees: But what I think we both have in common is that we both love pop music and classic song-writing. Thats the foundation of everything we do, and the rest of it just comes through our influences. Mine are more ambient and avant-garde. Hers are more soul and the music of the 90s.

Another River, their second album, came out last October: It went well. We have got a few good reviews, and people felt there was a progression from the first album. We wanted to make sure that we kept moving forwards and did something that was different to the first one. Rather than forcing it, I think we just let it happen. It was more like the shackles coming off. This time we wanted to do the music that we wanted to do and not worry about what other people thought. I think that created its own progression, and we were also two to three years older.

Catherine agrees: Partly also it is confidence. And experience. If you let yourself worry too much about the charts and what is popular, you lose sight of what you are trying to do. I think it is important to remember what you are about. You have got to remember your purpose, and you have got create something new, to push the boundaries. We were really, really pleased with it. We wrote nearly a hundred songs for it. It went back and forth. There are ten on the album.

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Brighton date for London's futurist duo The Alpines - Chichester ... - Chichester Observer

The average person will probably take about 10 minutes to read this article. During this time, an estimated $25 million would have transacted via e-commerce, 30 million search queries would have been made on Google, 40 million videos would have been uploaded on YouTube and 45 million pieces of content would have gone live on Facebook. Put simply, a lot will happen in the next 10 minutes as you sit comfortably on your sofa (preferably drinking a Nescaf), reading this. The concepts of time and speed have changed.

Not surprisingly, this has also infl uenced consumer behaviour which in turn has impacted the way we do branding. Where we once shouted brand communication, todays socially attuned consumers now demand brand conversations.

Many of us were trained as classical marketers and we would hone our skills in talking to consumers. However, in todays context, we are now required to focus instead of listening. Listening to brand conversations helps us to be more aware of what consumers are engaged in and the choices they make. This has also changed the way businesses identify areas for innovation. At Nestl, innovation has been the core of our growth, and we have long realised the secret to successful brand growth lies with our consumers. People sometimes think old companies are less able to adapt to new trends, but Nestl is stronger than ever after more than 100 years in Malaysia.

Our world today is in a constant state of fl ux. In order to survive, we have realised that we needed to grow, adapt and evolve quickly not just with technology and trends, but more importantly, with our consumers.

In 2011, the Nestl headquarters in Switzerland launched the global digital acceleration team. In March 2014, Malaysia became the fi fth country to launch its own digital acceleration team. We started by identifying strong digital natives within our marketing teams and packing them off for a nine-month mission at our Nestl headquarters. This investment in developing our people allowed us to cultivate a new generation of digital go-getters to build our brands.

Marketing and digital

With so much going on around us, its not unusual to overcomplicate or over intellectualise digital. In fact, I would argue the term digital marketing is obsolete.

Marketing is marketing and digital. While it is an important touch-point in todays context, it is but one of many touch-points within an integrated media plan. A successful marketer today is one who is able to master the complexity of orchestrating an eco-system comprising of a traditional above-the-line creative agency, sometimes a specialised digital creative agency, a media agency, a PR agency, a shopper agency and an events agency.

I believe the key to success is in developing a powerful media-neutral creative idea based on real insights, and then leveraging the power of digital in a meaningful and relevant way. After all, as marketers, we exist to delight consumers.

At Nestl Malaysia, weve even increased our investments into digital and social media in excess of 30%. By doing so, weve been able to create more personalised engagement with consumers, and better cater to their needs. We also set up an online store for our products.

Partnering with two hugely popular e-tailers, we launched our fl agship e-commerce store in October 2016 as a conscious strategy to provide a better experience of products and services, especially to cater to more health conscious consumers on the go.

There truly has never been a more exciting time to be a brand builder, especially in such a vibrant market like Malaysia.

The author of the article is Eugene Chan, director of communications and marketing, Nestle Malaysia.

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The Futurist: Full speed ahead - Marketing Interactive

SANTA BARBARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--QAD Inc. (Nasdaq:QADA) (Nasdaq:QADB), a leading provider of enterprise software and services for global manufacturing companies, today announced that world-renowned inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil will headline the speaker lineup for its annual customer conference,QAD Explore, May 8-11, 2017, at the Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit.

Described as the restless genius byThe Wall Street Journal and the ultimate thinking machine byForbes, Kurzweilis one of the worlds leading inventors, computer scientists, authors, thinkers and futurists.His keynote speech will take place onTuesday, May 9.

Kurzweils inventions include the CCD flatbed scanner, omni-font optical character recognition, and the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind. He has written five New York Times best-selling books, including The Singularity Is Near andHow To Create A Mind. He is co-founder and chancellor of Singularity University.

Kurzweil also invented the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments (Kurzweil Keyboard) for which he received a 2015 Technical GRAMMY Award for outstanding achievement in the field of music technology. A recipient of the National Medal of Technology from President Clinton, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002. He holds 21 honorary doctorates.

We are incredibly lucky to have Ray Kurzweil delivering a keynote at QAD Explore 2017, said QAD Chief Marketing Officer Carter Lloyds. His insights into the wide-ranging effects that computers, the internet and artificial intelligence have on the world are fascinating. With so many of our customers looking to leverage innovations like machine learning and the internet of things, its the perfect time to make Ray a part of our biggest event.

Explore is QADs largest annual event where customers, partners, sponsors and QAD experts come together for a week of informative sessions, hands-on training, manufacturing industry-specific presentations and networking. Theagendaprovides updates on key trends in manufacturing, strategic developments in the industries QAD serves, and information on new solution developments. Attendees will hear from over75 speakers, including QAD executives, customers and manufacturing authorities.

In addition to over 60 speakers, Explore features more than 40 workshops and hands-on training classes, many of which count toward APICS continuing education credits. The QAD Solutions Expo provides ample opportunities for sponsors and other members of the QAD community to exhibit, demonstrate and solicit feedback on their products and solutions.

Customers can register for the event atexpore.qad.com/register. QAD is offering an early bird registration fee of $1,295 (a $600 discount) for those who sign up byMarch 31. Full-price registration extends through the event. Registration includes access to more than 40 sessions, invitations to the Welcome Reception and the closing night off-site dinner, meals during the event, electronic access to all presentation materials, and access to the Solutions Expo show floor.

For the latest updates on QAD Explore 2017, follow @QAD_Community on Twitter, and look for #QADExplore.

About QAD The Effective Enterprise

QAD Inc. (Nasdaq:QADA) (Nasdaq:QADB) is a leading provider of enterprise software and services designed for global manufacturing companies. For more than 35 years, QAD has provided global manufacturing companies with QAD Enterprise Applications, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that supports operational requirements, including financials, manufacturing, demand and supply chain planning, customer management, business intelligence and business process management. QAD Enterprise Applications is offered in flexible deployment models in the cloud, on-premise or in a blended environment. With QAD, customers and partners in the automotive, consumer products, food and beverage, high technology, industrial products and life sciences industries can better align daily operations with their strategic goals to meet their vision of becoming more Effective Enterprises. For more information about QAD, call +1 805-566-6000, visitwww.qad.com.

QAD is a registered trademark of QAD Inc. All other products or company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Note to Investors: This press release contains certain forward-looking statements made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including, but not limited to, statements regarding projections of revenue, income and loss, capital expenditures, plans and objectives of management regarding the Companys business, future economic performance or any of the assumptions underlying or relating to any of the foregoing. Forward-looking statements are based on the companys current expectations. Words such as expects, believes, anticipates, could, will likely result, estimates, intends, may, projects, should, would, might, plan and variations of these words and similar expressions are intended to identify these forward-looking statements. A number of risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. These risks include, but are not limited to: risks associated with our cloud service offerings, such as defects and disruptions in our services, our ability to properly manage our cloud service offerings, our reliance on third-party hosting and other service providers, and our exposure to liability and loss from security breaches; demand for the company's products, including cloud service, licenses, services and maintenance; pressure to make concessions on our pricing and changes in our pricing models; protection of our intellectual property; dependence on third-party suppliers and other third-party relationships, such as sales, services and marketing channels; changes in our revenue, earnings, operating expenses and margins; the reliability of our financial forecasts and estimates of the costs and benefits of transactions; the ability to leverage changes in technology; defects in our software products and services; third-party opinions about the company; competition in our industry; the ability to recruit and retain key personnel; delays in sales; timely and effective integration of newly acquired businesses; economic conditions in our vertical markets and worldwide; exchange rate fluctuations; and the global political environment. For a more detailed description of the risk factors associated with the company and factors that may affect our forward-looking statements, please refer to the company's latest Annual Report on Form 10-K and, in particular, the section entitled Risk Factors therein, and in other periodic reports the company files with the Securities and Exchange Commission thereafter. Management does not undertake to update these forward-looking statements except as required by law.

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World-Renowned Inventor, Author and Futurist Ray Kurzweil ... - Business Wire (press release)