1. Futurist

Category Archives: Futurist

Is Healthcare.gov the Future? We Ask a Health Futurist

Posted on by

The metaphor is the Wright Brothers, not the Indianapolis 500, says Ian Morrison. Lets just get this sucker up in the air before we declare that flying is a bad idea.

Enable Social Reading

The metaphor is the Wright Brothers, not the Indianapolis 500, says Ian Morrison. Lets just get this sucker up in the air before we declare that flying is a bad idea. (Photo credit: ianmorrison.com)

Ian Morrison is a health care futurist.

Companies, trade groups and nonprofits call on him to speak about trends in health care and offer prognostications of what the future brings. Ive heard him speak a few times and his knowledge and sense of humor drew me in right away.

Last Friday, I tweeted a story written by Anna Gorman and Julie Appleby, friends at Kaiser Health News, about hundreds of thousands of consumers receiving cancellation notices from their insurance companies on account of the Affordable Care Act.

I was surprised to learn that Morrison was one of them.

I emailed him to find out more. This is what he told me: Until 2011, Morrison paid for his health coverage from a company on whose board of directors he served. The company was sold and he was insured through COBRA until this March. As he tells it, Blue Shield of California didnt want a badly behaved 60 year old Scotsman, so he got coverage through a preferred-provider organization offered by the insurance company Health Net through a Farm Bureau program.

No kidding, he says, hes no farmer.

Two weeks ago, he said he received a letter canceling that plan. He subsequently applied for coveragenot through Covered California, the states new health insurance marketplace, but directly through Blue Shield. Because of the Affordable Care Acts ban on discriminating based on pre-existing conditions, the insurer must take him.

Here is the original post:

Is Healthcare.gov the Future? We Ask a Health Futurist

Watch: Will.i.am And Intel Futurist Brian David Johnson Talk 'Wizards & Robots' At Comic Con

Posted on by

Will.i.am is a science geek at heart. The man who has made his millions off producing funktastic beats for his group The Black Eyed Peas and clocking in studio time with everyone from Chris Brown to Britney Spears, is also a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Now he's taking his love of all things tech and sci-fi to the pages of a new graphic novel titled Wizards & Robots alongside futurist Brian David Johnson, who he met during an Intel interview. The project, which launched at Comic Con in New York, will start as a novel and then be released as a web series scored by Will and delves into the world of the future.

The B.E.P. beatsmith also recalls how changing his squad up shifted his interests.

"I used to see Puffy and Jay walk into a club, and they would be hangin' out with Jacob the Jeweler, like 'wow, that's dope!' I wanna hang out with the geeks," Will tells VIBE. "I wanna hang out with the scientists and walk into the room with the most smartest geeks like bam! We about to change the world. I wanna hang out with a different crew of folks to have a different mindset on how they see the world. They don't run from problems. They run at them to solve them."

Check out the full interview where the two also reveal their favorite childhood wizards and robots, and why Will considers him and Johnson the "Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons" of the sci-fi world, above.Adelle Platon (@adelleplaton)

Video Shot By: Jason Chandler | Edited By: Brandon Burnett

See more here:

Watch: Will.i.am And Intel Futurist Brian David Johnson Talk 'Wizards & Robots' At Comic Con

Futurist and Author Simon Anderson to Keynote Two Education Events in October

Posted on by

Tallahassee, FL (PRWEB) October 18, 2013

Thought-provoking keynote speaker, education futurist and author, Simon Anderson has been selected to deliver two keynote sessions later this month, one in the U.S. and one in Austria. On October 22, 2013, Anderson will keynote the Telekom Austria Groups Future of Learning event in Vienna, Austria where hell discussing new technologies and trends that are transforming education and how corporate universities can use this to better position themselves for an uncertain future. The following week, Anderson will be speaking about key education and future of work trends with members of the Minnesota Community Education Association in Minneapolis, MN on October 30.

The presentations, drawing partially from Andersons recent book "Foresight 20/20: A Futurist Explores the Trends Transforming Tomorrow" (co-authored with globally acclaimed futurist Jack Uldrich) will discuss trends and technologies that are impacting the future of education, including MOOCs, Adaptive Learning Platforms, and Mobile 3.0 devices that take learning outside the four walls of the classroom. He will also discuss the future of work, automation, and entrepreneurship trends in a fast-changing world.

In the past year, Anderson has addressed businesses and other organizations around the country including AT&T, Dakota Wesleyan University in South Dakota, GAI Consultants in Orlano, FL, Central Coast Business Symposium in Arroyo Grande, CA, and TalTechs TechExpo 2013 in Tallahassee, FL. His work was recently featured on the World Future Societys monthly newsletter and on their site, wfs.org.

Parties interested in learning more about Simon Anderson, his book, his blog or his speaking availability are encouraged to visit his website at: http://www.futur1st.com. Media wishing to know more about these or other events or interviewing Simon Anderson can contact him directly at 850-321-9472 or simon.anderson(at)futur1st(dot)com.

Read this article:

Futurist and Author Simon Anderson to Keynote Two Education Events in October

The Real Blade Runner: A Conversation with Futurist Syd Mead – Autoline This Week 1732 – Video

Posted on by


The Real Blade Runner: A Conversation with Futurist Syd Mead - Autoline This Week 1732
He started out drawing cars and became a Hollywood sensation. Syd Mead, the inspiration behind the futurist world of the film "Blade Runner" as well as many ...

By: Autoline Network

Originally posted here:

The Real Blade Runner: A Conversation with Futurist Syd Mead - Autoline This Week 1732 - Video

Datawars and the future of Advertising: Futurist Speaker Gerd Leonhard at Guardian Ad Summit (2) – Video

Posted on by


Datawars and the future of Advertising: Futurist Speaker Gerd Leonhard at Guardian Ad Summit (2)
EDITED version (without Guardian intro jingle). Thanks to TheGuardian for making this available via http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/video/2013/oct/0...

By: Gerd Leonhard

More:

Datawars and the future of Advertising: Futurist Speaker Gerd Leonhard at Guardian Ad Summit (2) - Video

Looking backwards from the Future: Futurist Gerd Leonhard Presentation at Pathways 2013 – Video

Posted on by


Looking backwards from the Future: Futurist Gerd Leonhard Presentation at Pathways 2013
This is the complete video of my talk at the White Bull Summit / Pathways 2013 event in Barcelona, on October 9, 2013, see http://whitebull.com/latest/pathwa...

By: Gerd Leonhard

Originally posted here:

Looking backwards from the Future: Futurist Gerd Leonhard Presentation at Pathways 2013 - Video

Engler, Futurist Burrus To Keynote 2013 BLM CEO Summit

Posted on by

DETROIT (WWJ) Former Michigan Gov. John Engler and noted futurist Daniel Burrus will provide the keynote speeches at Business Leaders for Michigans 2013 CEO Summit, set for Wednesday, Oct. 30 at the Westin Book Cadillac in Detroit.

BLM is the statewide CEO organization that succeeded Detroit Renaissance.

Engler is now president of the national CEO group Business Roundtable.

Burrus is the author of Flash Foresight: How to See the Invisible and Do the Impossible, and is a contributing writer on innovation and change for CNBC, Huffington Post and others. For the Michigan CEO Summit, Burrus share strategies for seeing hidden opportunities and creatively solving problems on the horizon.

The theme of the 2013 Michigan CEO Summit is Putting Michigan in the Winners Circle. This is the second annual Michigan CEO Summit presented by Business Leaders for Michigan.

In addition, attendees will get a preview of the 2013 Economic Competitiveness Benchmarking Report and hear how Michigan stacks up to its competitors national and globally.

Other speakers are to include Walbridge chairman and CEO John Rakolta Jr., Haworth Inc. chairman emeritus Richard Haworth, Meijer Inc. co-chairman and CEO Hank Meijer, La-Z;-Boy Inc. chairman, president and CEO Kurt Darrow, Two Men And A Truck International Inc. CEO Brig Sorber, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan president and CEO Daniel Loepp, Steelcase president and CEO James Hackett, Empowerment Plan founder and CEO Veronika Scott, Duo Security CEO Dug Song, Armune BioScience Inc. president and CEO Eli Thomssen, FirstMerit Michigan chairman and CEO Sandra Pierce, PVS Chemicals Inc. president and CEO James Nicholson, and BLM president and CEO Doug Rothwell.

The event will run from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Cost to attend is $125, which includes breakfast and lunch.

For additional speaker information, the full agenda and registration, visit http://www.businessleadersformichigan.com/events/.

Go here to see the original:

Engler, Futurist Burrus To Keynote 2013 BLM CEO Summit

David Byrne: Great Musician, Terrible Futurist

Posted on by

The January, 1987 issue of OMNI Magazine included a cover story titled, "14 Great Minds Predict the Future." OMNI asked influential people from a variety of fields what was in store for humanity in the year 2007, twenty years into the future. There were predictions about everything from peace in the Middle East to 3D televisions.

David Byrne, lead singer and songwriter of the Talking Heads, gazed into his crystal ball to write about pop art, the future of television, and why computers will never help the creative process. With the benefit of hindsight it's a little hard to believe that Byrne was so pessimistic about the potential for computers as a creative tool, especially when futuristic designs for computers were getting so many others excited. An excerpt from the OMNI piece appears below.

David Byrne, Lead Singer, Talking Heads

I don't think computers will have any important effect on the arts in 2007. When it comes to the arts they're just big or small adding machines. And if they can't "think," that's all they'll ever be. They may help creative people with their bookkeeping, but they won't help in the creative process.

The video revolution, however, will have some real impact on the arts in the next 20 years. It already has. Because people's attention spans are getting shorter, more fiction and drama will be done by television, a perfect medium for them. But I don't think anything will be wiped out; books will always be there; everything will find its place.

Outlets for art, in the marketplace and on television, will multiply and spread. Even the three big TV networks will feature looser, more specialized programming to appeal to special-interest groups. The networks will be freed from the need to try to please everybody, which they do now and inevitably end up with a show so stupid nobody likes it. Obviously this multiplication of outlets will benefit the arts.

I don't think we'll see the participatory art that so many people predict. Some people will use new equipment to make art, but they will be the same people who would have been making art anyway. Still, I definitely think that the general public will be interested in art that was once considered avant-garde.

Original post:

David Byrne: Great Musician, Terrible Futurist

This Is What A Great '60s Futurist Thought The Present Would Look Like

Posted on by

At some point US Steel decided they wanted to be supercool and impress all the cool steel-buying kids, so they did something very smart: they hired futurist Syd Mead to make a bunch of paintings showing a utopian future. Built from steel. With lots of great steel cars.

These paintings show an incredible, sleek future, one that seems to take its design inspirations from 1970s America, but filters them through an elongating lens of sexy science. Check out that car in the top shot there it's clearly inspired by 70s-era Cadillacs, but takes all the those design cues to their utomost extreme, and the result is pretty spectacular. And, interestingly, it suggests a significant change to DOT regulations that put a huge emphasis on side-marker lighting.

S

Also, what's with that white genetically-modified tiger-cat thing? Did he come in the car, or are those things just wandering around in the Utopian future?

There's even a Hot Wheels version of the Mead-designed Sentinel 400! Who knew?

Anyway, I suggest getting really close to your monitor and staring into these images until you believe you're actually living in there. Enjoy.

S

S

Read this article:

This Is What A Great '60s Futurist Thought The Present Would Look Like

Gartner on smart machines: “Futurist fantasy” or future job menace?

Posted on by

One of the hot topics at this week's Gartner Symposium/ITExpo is the future impact of smart machines that exploit machine learning and deep-learning algorithms to let them behave autonomously and can adapt to their environment.

One of the hot buttons with such machines is that they "can enhance processes and decision making, but could also remove the need for humans in the process and decision effort. CIOs will see this as a means of delivering greater efficiency, but will have to balance between the active human workforce and the cold efficiency of machines that can learn," Gartner analysts said.

[IN THE NEWS: Vinyl records fight digital death]

Still 60% of CEOs believe that the emergence of smart machines capable of absorbing millions of middle-class jobs within 15 years is a "futurist fantasy," according to Gartner's 2013 CEO survey. However, Gartner predicts that smart machines will have widespread and deep business impact within only seven years through 2020.

Gartner believes that the capability and reliability of smart machines will dramatically increase through 2020 to the point where they will have a major impact on business and IT functions. The impact will be such that firms that have not begun to develop programs and policies for a "digital workforce" by 2015 will not perform in the top quartile for productivity and operating profit margin improvement in their industry by 2020. As a direct result, the careers of CIOs who do not begin to champion digital workforce initiatives with their peers in the C-suite by 2015 will be cut short by 2023.

"The bottom line is that many CEOs are missing what could quickly develop to be the most significant technology shift of this decade," said Kenneth Brant, research director at Gartner, in a statement.

There is already a multifaceted marketplace for engineering a 'digital workforce,' backed by major players on both the supply and demand side. This marketplace comprises intelligent agents, virtual reality assistants, expert systems and embedded software to make traditional machines 'smart' in a very specialized way, plus a new generation of low-cost and easy-to-train robots and purpose-built automated machines that could significantly devalue and/or displace millions of humans in the workforce, Brant continued.

"The supply side of the market - including IBM, GE, Google, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon - is placing large bets on the success of smart machines, while the demand side includes high-profile first movers that will trigger an 'arms race' for acquiring and/or developing smart machines," Brant added.

While Gartner research asserts that smart machines will have widespread and deep impact through 2020, we also recognize there are significant impediments in the business, political, economic, social and technology spheres that must be overcome and these include

Some other interesting smart machine observations from the Gartner analysts include:

More here:

Gartner on smart machines: “Futurist fantasy” or future job menace?

Futurist asks the right questions

Posted on by

Topics: futurist, sohail inayatullah

SPEAK to Sohail Inayatullah for 46 minutes, and don't be alarmed, firstly, if your head hurts.

Also, try not to be surprised by the impressive list of people and organisations he has worked with, a sort of name-dropping on humble steroids.

The Singapore Prime Minister's office, Interpol, Australian Federal Police, BUPA, Victorian Museum, Boeing, Queensland Libraries, Victoria Health, Islamic scientists in Pakistan, Gold Coast council, the Hawaii State Judiciary, a "large cola company" and the Dubai Ministry.

Who is he?

Born in Pakistan, Sohail moved countries every two years due to his parents' work, living in Geneva, Malaysia, New York, Hawaii and Brisbane. He moved to Mooloolaba in 1999, lured by beachy promises from a QUT academic who heard him deliver a speech in Finland.

He has a PhD in political science and macro history, the study of big patterns of change going back thousands of years. He is an adjunct professor at the University of the Sunshine Coast. He is a Fellow of the World Futures Studies Federation and part of the International Advisory Council of the World Future Society.

Aged 55, he has two children, a daughter in Year 12 at Mountain Creek and a son studying linguistics in Barcelona. He became a vegetarian in 1975. He travels overseas delivering speeches four months of the year, and is home in Mooloolaba for the remaining eight months.

What does he do?

It can be hard to get your head around, but the question probably should be: what doesn't he do? He travels the world running foresight workshops. He says his job is not to predict but to "help with scenarios" to create a preferred future.

See more here:

Futurist asks the right questions

This 'Futurist' Just Grabbed $50 Million In Funding For His App Search Engine

Posted on by

Quixey

Tomer Kagan, cofounder, Quixey

He's a board member of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and works with the National Science Foundation's futurist project.

His vision is that everything in our lives will be powered by software, even things like personalized food and traveling hospitals, and people will interact with the world through mobile devices.

But before you can use all of these apps, you have to find them, hence Quixey makes an app discovery search engine. It currently powers about 100 million searches a month and is used by companies like Microsoft, Sprint, and Ask.com.

His work as futurist is proving to be a profitable edge for his company. On Thursday, Quixey announced that it had landed a huge, $50 million round of funding lead by the Alibaba Group.

Alibaba is the "Amazon" of China, the largest Internet ecommerce site in that country. Google chairman Eric Schmidt's fund Innovation Endeavors also contributed (it had previously invested in Quixey). So did Atlantic Bridge, Translink Capital, US Venture Partners, and Chinese VC WI Harper.

Quickey has raised $74.2 million to date. We caught up with Kagen to ask him about his company.

Business Insider: Did your work as a futurist help him you nab this funding?

Tomer Kagan: When we're talking to investors we obviously talk to them about the future plans for Quixey and how we see the market 5, 10 and 20 years down the line. Alibaba and Quixey share the idea of thinking very long-term.

Read more from the original source:

This 'Futurist' Just Grabbed $50 Million In Funding For His App Search Engine


  1. Futurist