Daily Inspiration; "If you weren't paying attention in chemistry class, you d better start paying attention now!" - #Futurist Jim Carroll
My dad was a chemical engineer. He worked hard working with science - first, at a basic chemicals company; then, managing process and engineering at a liquor manufacturing company, and finally being in charge of a major company that manufactured specialty chemicals. Finally, he worked for the environmental management group of a provincial government in Canada.
I will admit that as a young child, I never really considered the work that he did to be tremendously exciting or important; when we are young, we tend to think of 'big' careers like lawyers, doctors, or bankers. Those were exciting professions!
And yet today, I look at the world of chemical science to be one of the most exciting - and far-reaching - aspects of our future. That's because we are going from 25 million known chemical substances today to over 1 billion by the year 2100. As science accelerates, we are discovering fascinating new materials which promise to revolutionize what we build, how we build it, and what it is we can actually build. This new era promises an era of big, bold thinking as to what is possible, changing every industry from automotive to aerospace, consumer products to packaging, and more. It's a revolution in the making!
"If you are a subscriber to either Tweetbot or Twitterrific, I beseech you to decline these prorated refunds. It’s a couple of bucks for you, but in the aggregate, this amounts to an existential sum of *already booked revenue* for these two companies, both exemplars of the indie iOS and Mac community.
"Reinstall the app if you’ve already deleted it. Tap that ‘I Don’t Need a Refund’ button and feel good about it. We have a month. Spread the word.”"
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If you had Tweetbot or Twitteriffic, please consider helping them out in an unforeseen and difficult time. He explains. If you are using @ivory read the post as well, because you could help.
Daily Inspiration: "If your definition of innovation limits the scope of your opportunities you need a better definition!" - #Futurist Jim Carroll
I was on an exploratory call with a client the other day - they are looking for, as the individual put it - someone to fire up the organization's overall capability and willingness to be more innovative.
That got me going because, for a long time, I've always thought that organizations limit their perspective on what innovation can be - it goes far beyond the design and creation of new products and services. After the call, I shared with them an article that Credit Suisse distributed to its global client base in 2008; it featured an interview with me on the future and innovation. It does a great job of summarizing my thinking in regard to the call I just had.
Because innovation can be much more than you think it is. It's in the article.
Daily Inspiration: "A strategy based on 'FOMO' is not a strategy. It's lunacy" - #Futurist Jim Carroll
The near-term future with A.I. is an unholy mess.
The long term doesn't look much better really, and it's safe to say that going forward, chat-based artificial intelligence is the new crypto! There is so much hype around this fast-moving trend today that there is absolutely hysteria around getting involved - and the result is that a lot of companies are going to do a lot of stupid things. I'm not necessarily talking about the companies bringing chat-based A.I. to the world - Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, and others - that's a whole separate mess. I'm talking about regular, mainstream companies.
That was one of the conclusions I offered up during a keynote yesterday in Florida for a room full of CEOs of major reinsurance companies. The latter half of my talk focused on a tour of the trends around A.I. - what's real, what's not, what's hyped, and what's overhyped. My intent was to provide them with a grounding in reality so that they might carefully judge the many strategic requests they will be getting from their staff and leadership teams.
@bobzartz HUGE opportunities with A.I. everywhere - medical, construction, big data interpretation, and tons of stuff. But this chat stuff. Ugh. I can't find many people saying anything good about it or the speed at which it is coming.
1 of 2/ Here's what I know. Most Internet-of-Things implementations are spectacular disasters. That's why there is an "InternetOfShit" Twitter account -- all it does is report on those bad implementations. Fridges get bricked, doorbells get hacked, TVs are upgrade disasters. Corporate organizations don't do IT well - they don't do complex smart IT well.
If you think A.I. is going to see a lot of wonderful, well-thought-out, properly architected technology implementations, I can sell you a bridge.
Take a look at my "11 Rules of iOT architecture," and ask yourself how many *good* IOT applications you've seen. Not many.
Now ask yourself if you have the confidence corporate groups will do the same thing with A.I.
@LeeFromVT You need to link it to a domain to work; I don't think you can hack it to just an IP address. I'm running fine on 2GB, 50Gb storage, one month of transfer is barely 22gb as seen below.
The key is you have to configure an AWS for media - either Amazon AWS or a block storage AWS from Vultr or someone else. You can do 1TB at Vultr for $5 a month. My AWS storage right now is about 80 GB from 3 months, pruned back a bit. I have a lot of followers and follow a lot so that's where the media comes from. That way, none of the media - images, etc - ever hits your server.
If I were you, just fire up a Vultr server like mine, link it to a domain you have, and give it a go. A referral code if you want to try. I just found I've learned so much more about the architecture of Mastodon by running one.
I just noticed this message in my admin panel. Not sure how long it’s been there. Google doesnt give much guidance on how to fix it, and it might be related to an upgrade to 4.1?
29 years ago today, a little book about the Internet was released in Canada.
In 3 weeks, it was a #1 national bestseller and my life forever changed. I went on to co-author 34 books about the Internet in a 7-year time span and sold over a million books.
You never know when the magic of lightning is going to strike you!
By the time the book was released, I had already been online for 11 years. People were trying to understand what it all meant - and I quickly developed a career on stage explaining it in a way that made sense. Today, I continue to do that, albeit in the broader context of the future; this little book led to a career where I'm represented by the same speaking agents as Barack and Michelle Obama, among others. I've had audiences of 10,000+ in Las Vegas, and have traveled the world sharing my insight. NASA has had me in (twice) to talk to a room full of astronauts about ... the future.
It all began when I got online in 1982 and then wrote a little book that came out on this day, March 5, 1994.
I spent my morning Friday helping with the 50/50 draw at the "Mens Day' at my local ski club for a local charity my wife and I are involved in - https://eventsfor.life
EFL as we call it? It's a local charity for special needs young adults; it helps them with life skills through day activities.
We raised $30,000.
Half went to the winning ticket.
The winner immediately donated back 1/2 of that amount.
Then the crowd of guys near the front of the stage where the draw occurred immediately committed to donating back another $7,500.
So we raised an awesome amount, supporting a program for those who deserve a joyful life..
If you want to see the magic of what happens when we build a life pathway for those who are less fortunate than yourself, go watch the Sing video on the website above. I dare you not to find compassion and joy coursing through your veins.
There is good in the world. Lots of evil out there, but lots of good.
Daily Inspiration: "Don't be discouraged by your mistakes. Be inspired by your willingness to admit to them!" - #Futurist Jim Carroll
Let's face it - while all of us might focus on the skeletons in our closets, we should instead focus on our spirits of inspiration. And yet, people have been conditioned to fear failure because of the potential for closeted skeletons - with the result that when things go wrong, they take on a lot of self-imposed grief. When we fear failure, we don't take on risk - and risk is at the essence of all innovation. Innovation is critical for moving forward into the future. The result? Fear of failure is at the root of the inability of many people to align themselves with tomorrow!
I see this issue all around me as I speak to various industries and organizations; it's certainly a message we can find in many surveys around innovation and leadership; I was just reminded of this while undertaking research for an upcoming keynote in the financial services sector, coming across two very interesting surveys.
@benjaminmetzler@caseynewton Here in Canada, that happened and 10 million cell and Internet users lost access > 24 hours because of a blown network routing change.
Organizations really need to do better. On the other hand, all of this is entirely predictable with Twitter at this point.
Daily Inspiration: "What was once slow is now fast; once fringe, now mainstream; once far away, ever-present. Once ridiculed, now eagerly accepted. We've shifted forever. Adaptability defines us!" - Futurist Jim Carroll
It's hard not to think about the fact that we are coming up on three years to the start of the global pandemic; many of us will mark the start of that period of time by the day that the NBA shut down. That's when everything seemed to become real.
Since that time, it's pretty obvious that the world has changed in very fundamental ways. So have we! I mentioned this in a mailing I had yesterday to many of my speaker's bureau representatives, commenting:
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Three years ago this week, all of us came to realize that our world, as we knew it, had been shattered.
As a bureau representative, you were suddenly dealing with a massive number of cancellations and complex contract and booking circumstances. Speakers like myself were scrambling to put in place some sort of virtual offering. All of us were hunkering down in fear and panic, and yet at the same time, somehow, focusing on what to do next.
We were all in a state of shock, and wondering where we might be in the future. Three years in, we're now in that future!
As an industry, we've learned many things over the last three years - how to reinvent fast, manage the volatility, keep our optimism fueled, and be relentless in focusing on opportunity.
@sfoskett I once flew an OmanAir flight LHR-MCT on a brand new 787 - it had just come in from Muscat which was its first passenger flight. It had that brand new airplane smell!
My 27-year-old son is trying to buy a very specialized type of bike; inventory appears only infrequently. So I've got two of my Linux systems (repurposed old Macbooks) running some scraping with BeautifulSoup to hit a website checking for changes. If it becomes available, we pounce.
Daily Inspiration: "The future of work? It's the skills you don't know about that you need to be planning for!" - Futurist Jim Carroll
What can the legal cannabis industry teach us about the future? Quite a bit about the future of the workforce and skills. As I will often joke on stage, most major food companies will have to hire cannabis experts in the near future to help them deal with their development and production of gummy bears!
The slide I used? Right here! In article on the future of cannabis in the drinks industry, it was suggested that "students in food science and food processing need to be trained in cannabis now, so that they're ready to help develop new products in five years' time" is from Drinks Magazine, published in 2018.
The point? Organizations always need to be thinking RIGHT now about the skills they might need in the future. Borrowing on one of my favourite phrases, our reality is that we need to prepare for jobs that do not yet exist, for careers not yet invented, for knowledge not yet in existence, and for industries yet to be defined. That is the future of work!
The future? It's big, it's bold, and it's happening all around you!
@Teri_Kanefield Democracy vs. a long, laborious never-ending legal process.
I suspect the long, laborious never-ending legal process wins, resulting in the end of democracy, and thereby destroying the long, laborious law process, once The Era of Retribution takes over on January 21, 2025.
Just published the latest in my BIG Future series : The Longevity Divide.
--- Since 1900, global life expectancy has doubled. But now, accelerating medical science, combined with a focus on lifestyle, is leading us to the era of the 'super-seniors' - a growing percentage of the population that will live a rewarding and fulfilling life to 100 and perhaps, beyond.
At the same, time, however, many will die an early death. Increasing life expectancy is not widespread - at the same time we see longevity, we see an acceleration of a decrease in lifespan for those who are subsumed by the '*reality crisis*' and the '*expectation gap!'*
Daily Inspiration: "Dismissive skepticism is at the root of many a missed opportunity!" - #Futurist Jim Carroll
To be a futurist is to be one who is often accused of getting the significance of various trends wrong. That's OK - we have to deal with the skeptics - it comes with the territory!
I've had some interesting reactions to a few of my trends pieces as of late. A few folks have dismissed my Vertical Farming post, part of my BIG Future series, suggesting that it will never amount to much, most of all because it won't 'scale' to meet the needs of millions of people. Last week, in an event with a number of CEOs, one fellow seemed to be rather dismissive of a move to electric vehicles, pointing out the recent challenge in California. Just days after a law was passed requiring that by 2035 that all new vehicles be electric vehicles, electrical utilities were asking people to NOT charge their cars because of excessive demand on the grid as the result of all the storms this winter.
In both cases, the basis for their skepticism is well founded and warranted - but misses the point the most difficult thing about the future is not necessarily the trend but the timing.
You can dismiss a trend - you can't deny it though.
You should never let your skepticism get in the way of the potential reality of a trend.
@atomicpoet Here's the thing though. All these regulators will demonstrate they are toothless. They will do nothing. He will get a pass. I am just so completely jaded on regulatory authorities and the legal process right now. Everyone gets a pass. He gets a pass. The former guy gets a pass. Fox News gets a pass. Everyone gets a pass! Even Oprah get a pass even though she did nothing wrong.
@EricCarroll@toad.social @atomicpoet@fediversenews Personally, I think Verification works better here than 'over there.' Peopel can simply visit the web page to see if the person is who they purport to be. If it turns out the web page shows them to be a werewolf-barking-self-deluded-right-wing-wingnut, they'll know that too.
Daily Inspiration: "If you spend your time waiting to see when something might happen, you probably won't be ready for it when it actually happens!" - #Futurist Jim Carroll
The blog post How much time of an average life is spent waiting? features some pretty depressing statistics:
"According to a Timex survey, Americans wait: - on average of 20 minutes a day for the bus or train - 32 minutes whenever they visit a doctor - 28 minutes in security lines whenever they travel - 21 minutes for a significant other to get ready to go out - 13 hours annually waiting on hold for a customer service - 38 hours each year waiting in traffic - those living in Big cities wait in traffic for more than 50 hours annually - about 37 billion hours each year waiting in line somewhere"
In other words, we spent about 6 months of our entire lives waiting for things!
But a lot of that involves uncontrollable, involuntary waiting - it's not our fault when we are stuck on hold with a customer service representative waiting for some help. (By the way, that's estimated to take up about 43 days of our life!)
It's the controllable waiting for which we are at fault: the indecision that drives us, the decisions we defer, the actions we don't take, the initiative we forgo - all because we are waiting to see what might happen before taking action.
As you try to unravel the collapse of a Silicon Valley based bank, you might want to read trend #1 of my '23 Trends for 2023' series - Technoskepticism. Tech ain't over. We're just cleaning out the froth.
Intro:
I believe this will be *THE* defining trend of 2023 (*other than geopolitics and war which are beyond my scope)*
What is it? The opposite of techno-optimism of course! A researcher at Standford University did a wonderful job of defining this other extreme.
*There is a word for this sentiment: ‘techno-optimism.’ Specifically, this is defined as the belief that technology plays a vital role in solving the most pressing threats to humankind. In moderation, this is a sound belief. A*
*The dangers of techno-optimism 30 November 2022, U-Wire*
In 2022, a lot of people lost a lot of faith in the power, benefit, and opportunity of technology, and some are going to the other extreme of optimism. We will see this play out in a major way in 2023 The impact of this trend is significant, for it will cause challenges to the issue of the timing of the future and the speed at which some organizations will choose to align to it. Some will win because they will be aware of it but won’t fall to it; others will lose because it will become core to their purpose, and will defer their future.
True story. On the day that Lehman Brothers went down in '08, I was in doing a talk on future trends and innovation for the CEO and senior leadership team of a major financial organization, in Philly. My start time was 915. ' At 935 they all started walking out. I thought my delivery was off the day.
Nope. It was just the market was melting down and, well, stuff was going down!
Me in 2006 in my post: "The Future of Snowboarding and skiing"
"**Smart-goggles will become part of the scene**. They’ll use the same virtual-cockpit helmet-mounted display that the military is using. With a voice command, I’ll be able to pull up an integrated trail map/condition report ; it will be displayed on the thin film of your goggles so that it simply “appears” in the air in front of you."
This week: @kottke on "Augmented Reality Ski Goggles" via @gruber
"The other day on the chair lift, my kids and I were talking about our top skiing speeds (me: low 40s, them: 50+) and one of us mentioned that it would be cool if your current speed was shown on a heads-up display in your goggles. So this morning I went looking for AR ski goggles and of course they exist."
@matt@jerry "they haven’t been able to outgrow that perception and so they still have trouble getting good banking and other relationships."
I think any crypto thing will have trouble getting any real banking relationships at this point given everything that has transpired and what is still yet to come. A long dark winter....
If you watched the mh370 Netflix show and got mad with the crazy conspiracy path it went down, read this. Heck of a read.
I would have shared it directly from Medium but @coachtony still has a Twitter share button there and not a mastodon one. You'd think if @medium was really committed to being here, they would have fixed that by now.
Daily Inspiration: "When challenged by the circumstances, change the circumstances!" - #Futurist Jim Carroll
Here's one thing you know for certain - relentless change will always provide for a new and unexpected set of circumstances. It's your ability to roll with that change that will define you. With that in mind, when confronted by some change, by something uniquely new, and by the challenging circumstances around it, don't run away from 'it,' whatever 'it' might be.
Instead, deal with 'it.'
In other words, when challenged by the circumstances, change the circumstances. How do you do this? Here are a few ideas to get you going - take 'it' on rather than shying away from it:
Daily Inspiration: "Rather than spending your time thinking about what is going wrong, spend more time thinking about what is going right!" - #Futurist Jim Carroll
Here we go again!
Scary headlines!
It is important, however, to put these scary headlines into context - we've been here before. It's also critical to keep remembering that the collapse of the two banks was more due to leadership incompetence, aided and abetted by regulatory changes for the worse - rather than any widespread underlying economic weakness. (Though one does wonder how much incompetence is out there!)
The sad thing about this state of affairs is that we are now, once again, living through a sort of 'economic whiplash' - people were just starting to return to a state of optimism, and for many, that optimism will now have taken a dent. Overall, this will have implications for the economy going forward - it will reinforce the indecision that causes many organizations to pause their actions, defer their initiatives, and focus on pulling back on the steps necessary to move forward.
For me, at times like these, it should be pretty obvious that you should let optimism be your guide. Sometimes, that is best done by shifting your mind away from short-term volatility to long-term opportunities. In that context, the future is still full of opportunity - and you are richer than you think!
Daily Inspiration: "Dare I suggest that if you are thinking about a bit of downsizing, you consider getting rid of your Department of Procrastination and Delay?" - #Futurist Jim Carroll
Downsizing seems to be all the rage these days, particularly at tech companies. As someone who has studied innovation for thirty years, I've learned that often, those doing the downsizing are targeting the wrong people.
With that in mind, let me offer up my expertise on what groups should be on the chopping block. In fact, there are a number of departments that I suggest you might consider axing:
- The Creativity and Innovation Prevention Department
- The Office Of Small Thinking and Marginal Ideas
- The Department of Lost Initiative
- The Excuses and Justification Bureau
- The Committee To Create Committees
- The Aggressive Indecision Department
- The Division of Obsolete Technologies
- The Department of Reinventing the Wheel
- The Office of Doing What's Always Been Done
- The Department of Repetitive But Useless Actions
- The Department that Always Does it This Way
- The Office of the Leadership Sycophants (That one is for Twitter)
@garry I knew these guys. Balsillie once accused me of ‘tech-boosterism’ when I did a talk ; he thought I hyped tech too much LOL. Their HQ was about 12 km from my home. It’s such a sad and unnecessary failure, but predictable. (fun fact: i was once approached by one director to consider a board position; this was about 3 years before the implosion. Good thing i never made the cut!)
https://jimcarroll.social is an example. I didn’t spend much time on that site, you can do a lot more with it. The examples you see on the site are indicative of some of the cool stuff you can do.
Daily Inspiration: "A brilliant idea badly executed often results in a better idea executed brilliantly!" - Futurist Jim Carroll
When Amazon launched the infamous Fire Phone, it failed.
Spectacularly.
How did Jeff Bezos react?
"If you think that’s a big failure, we’re working on much bigger failures right now — and I am not kidding. Some of them are going to make the Fire Phone look like a tiny little blip."
In other words, it was a great failure!
This is part of the whole concept that great ideas - perhaps not a brilliant idea in the case of the Fire Phone - can often become the springboard for great success later on, providing the very foundation for that next great idea!
Consider a few great ideas that failed - or were perceived to be a certain failure - that later become brilliant opportunities: When Amazon launched its Web Services Business, most analysts predicted massive losses and that it might actually kill the company. Today, this division is worth billions and is hugely successful.
Apple's Newton was a spectacular failure but paved the way for the brilliant launch of the iPad and iPhone many years later.
Nintendo's Virtual Boy, a 3D gaming console, was supposed to be the future of gaming. A flop, it suffered from major technological flaws. But it gave the organization a pathway forward.
Futurist Jim Carroll has always had a lot of great ideas. Some worked.
Daily Inspiration: "The most important thing you need to know is the thing you don't yet know about!" - #Futurist Jim Carroll
I was out skiing yesterday, and as often happens, you can get into delightful conversations while on the chairlift. I ended up sharing a few rides up with a lawyer, and we ended up speaking about changes in her profession, and the new areas of a specialty practice that are emerging. We quickly began to focus our conversation on the issue of the growth of legal knowledge.
My comments to her were based on issues just covered in one of my 23 Trends for 2023, having to do with Knowledge Velocity, pointing out that the biggest challenge now facing the industry is the rapid growth of new knowledge - "how is any lawyer supposed to be able to keep up?" And that became the basis for today's quote!
As I pointed out in that post, back in 1982, it was estimated that the total volume of human knowledge was doubling every 12 months - but IBM has recently suggested that the impact of the Internet is such that it is now doubling every 12 hours. That's a pretty staggering change - and this is before the massive knowledge generation that is now coming with text-based A.I. tools.
22.04 uses a keyring which changes the default remote desktop password every time the machine starts; it's a real pain to try to get a workaround to this going. 20.04 was easy!
@beyondwatts I might try that. I got things working with automatic login and Remote Desktop, but cannot get things to go headless. It was very easy on 20.04.
Daily Inspiration: "Too many trends are overhyped and under-delivered. Mastering the future involves figuring out which ones!" - Futurist Jim Carroll
I love my Tesla. But as you know, I'm no longer a big fan of the founder.
And I've become massively skeptical of the potential for self-driving cars - indeed, I suspect that I got both the timing and sophistication of the trend wrong. I've known this for some time; last August, I filmed a video and filmed an overview titled It's Not the Trend That Matters, It's the Timing! (Real 'Self Driving' Isn't Here, and Won't be For a Long, Long Time!).
You can read the post here, and I share it again below.
Obviously, I was a big believer in the potential for self-driving technology, by writing such trends overviews as 54 things you haven't thought about with electric, self-driving cars. Y
et, owning a Tesla with FSD ('full-self driving', which it obviously is not) makes you quite jaded on the potential for the trend. What's the basis for my reversal? Experience - as I note below, while what is there is a massively impressive technical feat, getting it to 100% reliability will likely never happen in my lifetime - and that is what is necessary for it to succeed. It's not "full" self-driving. It's "self-driving sometimes in known, predictable conditions."
Quite the article in the NYTimes on how the wingnuts are going after a hospital because, well, they are wingnuts
What they don’t realize is the long term impact of this will be that they will become a desert wasteland where no healthcare workers will want to work; no one will want to run the hospitals; the region begins to suffer.
"Your ability to dismiss a disruptive trend will always be exceeded by the ability of the disruptive trend to dismiss you!" - Futurist Jim Carroll
Toyota has a problem.
It is failing, fast, in the race to electric vehicle technology. While I am a skeptic on the arrival of self-driving car technology, I'm all-in on electric - and indeed, believe that in the next few years we will see a massive tipping point with production such that within ten years, most new vehicles will be electric. And few will be from Toyota. The brand might not survive due to the fact it has waited so long.
Why has this happened? As is often the case in family-run dynasties, it can be directly related to the refusal of the grandson of the founder, Akio Toyoda, to accept the reality of the disruption occurring in the automotive industry with the shift to electric vehicles. The result is that have now fallen significantly behind - not only Tesla, but other manufacturers who are leading the race such as Ford, Kia, and Volvo. How does happen? Denial of the obvious, discounting trends, and dismissing reality. The thing is - this happens all too often in far too many industries, and there are powerful lessons to learn here. The biggest lesson is that a stubborn CEO who clings to the past rather than aligning with the future can often be the basic cause of the downfall.
The lesson learned? You can dismiss disruptive change.
@phildoherty I think with all the massive investments going into batteries, infrastructuure and retooling, I don’t think hdyrogen has a path…. Just IMHO.
My topic is the future of financial services, wealth management, and the disruption of the insurance industry with a room full of several hundred advisers. It's going to include a good look at the impact of artificial intelligence going forward. So much fun to get back on stage!
Daily Inspiration: "If you can't predict what your business is going to look like in ten years, you might not have much of a business to look at!" - Futurist Jim Carroll
Solid, stable business organizations can die through leadership neglect - because the very nature of the business they might be operating in over time will fundamentally change.
That's why you need to understand the future, the trends that will define it, and the ideas that can help you shift with it. Shift? Reinventing! If you follow me, you will know that I regularly preach the 'religion of reinvention,' the 'spirituality of shifting.'
Daily Inspiration: "The future is a funny thing. Those who don't like it will end up there anyways!" - #Futurist Jim Carroll
Simply put, some people just don't like what's next.
This was the comment I made to the CEO of a client that just had me in for a talk. When he suggested that the audience of 300 would absolutely love my talk, I offered back my thoughts as to how I thought it would actually break down: 2/3 would absolutely love it, finding that it would provide a practical pathway into understanding what's next; another 10-20% would react, "well, I knew much of that already." But the remaining 10 to 20% would absolutely hate what I would have to say.
Why? Because they hate the future and what it represents.
Why are some people more negative about the future? What is it with this second group?
First, there is 'negativity bias.' That is the built-in capacity we all have to let negative things impact our emotions much more than positive ones.
Second, there is our tendency to focus on loss aversion. We tend to focus more on what we will lose, rather than being able to focus on what we might gain.
Third, change weariness kicks in. As I often observe on stage, "Ogden Nash once observed that for many people, progress is great, but it's gone on way too long.'"
What can you do about this? Recognize it. Talk about it!
I think you would agree with me that we’ve never quite seen a topic emerge so quickly as what has happened in the last few months with artificial intelligence, ChatGPT, and all the related topics.
I was on stage in Laguna Beach, California two days ago with several hundred insurance executives.
A.I. was on the agenda; they wanted me to help them understand it from a strategic level.
Here’s a short clip from my keynote.
People want to know what’s going on, and what to do about it. They want to understand it at a strategic, leadership, opportunity and risk level.
The Q&A portion of the event after my talk was UNREAL. People want to know.
Silicon Valley 2015 to 2022: "Hey, we have this thing called CRYPTO! It IS THE FUTURE! You need it and MUST have IT! NVM that using it burns down the planet!"
Silicon Valley 2023: "Hey, forget CRYPTO! We have this thing called generative AI. You need it and MUST have IT! NVM that it generates wrong information at scale and will burn down the planet though!"
An image of the people in the towns being left behind. (Hint: You can be a redneck, but the world tends to pass you by because, well, the future doesn't have much time for rednecks...)
And what I wrote in 2017 and have been preaching on stage since, well, forever.
Just for the record, I last checked in as root on my #selfhost#selfhosted Mastodon server about 3 weeks ago. Those who tell you not to do it because there is a lot of admin for a single-user Mastodon instance know not of what they speak.
My morning walk this AM was warm enough that a golf hat was in order. Spring is springing! The snow can leave now. I'm done with it.
My poor wife knows, however, that we are now entering what I have long called The Season of Gloom.
This is the brief period of time between the last ski outing of the year (likely this Sunday) and the first swim of the year (my birthday, April 14).
The Season of Gloom is the time between the end of winter and the start of spring as signified by that swim and features grey skies, fog, rain, and clouds.
Gloom.
For 32 years I've worked to have my pool open (Southern Ontario) by my birthday in order to have a swim, in order to ward off the Season of Gloom.
I fear this year, as we are in a new home, with a brand new pool not yet ready, that the Season of Gloom might be extended.
Are you a Mac user? I had a similar need ... but found I could use Apple Motion ($50) with some Apple Motion templates off of Storyblocks to create some pretty slick stuff. Learn how to drop in the video, change the titles, add some stock music - magic.
It took a little bit of learning but once I got through it, it became a pretty powerful skill set.
@anamariecox I also had my Russian friend doing video work -- stuff like this. She was the producer of the Russian edition of Dancing with the Stars during the day, freelancing at night. Worked for a very good rate. Communications with her today are hit and miss, obviously - and she is NOT supportive of the war, obviously.
Daily Inspiration: "Chase the strategy. Not the technology!" - Futurist Jim Carroll
It's 1995. The Internet has exploded onto the scene, and everyone is going bonkers with the arrival of the World Wide Web. It went like this. -- Everyone: "We need to have a Web site!" CEO: "Why?" Everyone: "Because everyone else has one, and this is moving crazy fast!" CEO: "What's the strategy?" Everyone: "Um..." -- And so here we find ourselves today. Every CEO on the planet is going to have people banging on their door. -- Everyone: "We need to get involved with A.I.!" CEO: "Why?" Everyone: "Because everyone else is, and this thing is moving crazy fast!" CEO: "What's the strategy?" Everyone: "Um..." -- The parallels are uncanny. This is why I've found myself quickly launching into my 'it's the strategy, not the technology' mantra. Sometimes when I do this, I feel like I'm ruining the party - but strategy matters.
@sfoskett If you have a cloud server, hands down option is Sendy.co .... uses Amazon SES. Will cost you pennies per thousands of emails. Drop dead effective. Been a big fan for three years.
Daily Inspiration: "An optimist never lets a short season of gloom interfere with a longer scason of opportunity!" - #Futurist Jim Carroll
I've never liked the period of time between the end of ski season and the start of golf; I've long called this brief window "The Season of Gloom." While I joke about it, the fact is I also know I have absolutely nothing to complain about!
But still, it can get pretty grey. This morning, after some radiant sunshine yesterday, features cold sleet, or rain, or something miserable from the sky.
Even so, there is much to be thankful for - for one, the ability to find optimism at any moment in time, because that matters!
Daily Inspiration: "When you say you've decided to go in a different direction, it usually means that you don't really know the direction you are going!" - #Futurist Jim Carroll
It's the phrase that EVERYONE hates to hear. And it's the phrase that EVERYONE uses!
What's behind the phrase? Often, a lack of certainty, an inability to make decisions, and in essence, organizational dysfunction. Think about it - often certainty is your best weapon - and yet at the same time, it is in short supply. And so you resort to the easy way out when sharing decisions with those who are impacted, and hide behind this trite phrase.
And how do I know you are running with a shortage of certainty? Because I bet you have recently used the variation of the phrase that potential employees, consultants, and even speakers hate to hear: "We've decided to go in a different direction."
Back in December, I started my series, '23 Trends for 2023'.
As we hit the mark of being 1/4 of the way through the year, it's a good time to revisit the key trends that organizations are thinking about this year.
I'll start out tomorrow, posting one each day until we get through all 23!
@sfoskett Fantastic. If you need any help or guidance, let me know. My only weak point is that other than a server level backup (which occurs daily), I haven't put in place a good database backup process.
I also have a Wordpress-to-Sendy plugin that was $13 somewhere; it automates the process of grabbing form data (another plugin) and sending it direct to the database.
Daily Inspiration: "At some moment in time, you will transition from the shame of your mistakes into pride for the lessons you've learned from them!" - Futurist Jim Carroll
There's a second version that goes like this!
"At some moment in time, you will transition from the shame you have for the mistakes you have made, into pride for your ability to share the lessons that you have learned from them!"
As they say, mistakes are good for you! But as with any cliche, it's what you do with them that matters!
No one individual is perfect; no perfectionist is absolute. We've all been there - a moment in time in our business or personal life for which we would like to have a do-over. But the nature of time means that we can't; no matter how much we might like to, we can't erase our yesterdays - we can only paint our tomorrow's.
@phildoherty I answered wrong. No, I just wish he would fade away. Not gonna happen, but my dislike for him is at an all time high, Ruins my car every time I get in it.
Daily Inspiration: "It's better to face what you fear rather than focusing on the fear of what you might face!" - Futurist Jim Carroll
Meet Aurora!
She's a 2-year-old rescue dog, born during the pandemic, and unfortunately during the early days of her life, spending too much of her time locked away inside. It was only when Chris (pictured) and his partner Bianca rescued her that she discovered the outdoors.
And in time, me.
Our first encounters did not go so well; I carried a lot of baggage into the relationship early on.
Aurora? She scared me. Our early encounters were quite stressful - she didn't seem to take kindly to me, barking at me with what I interpreted to be some aggression. I would see her and either Christ or Bianca or both of them together with Aurora off in the distance, beginning to approach, and I would tense up. Aurora would come running towards me, often barking more as she got closer. It was very stressful for me; and most likely, for Aurora.
Why?
What was going on?
Baggage.
Last May, I was attacked and bit by a different dog just steps away from our ski chalet. The attack was aggressive; the wound was deep as the flesh was pierced. Fortunately, both I and the neighbor's dog had our 'shots,' and the various public health authorities and medical personnel who became involved determined that I would be ok. But it clearly impacted me.
@dave That's helpful insight, I covered a different angle on this - fly ash - in my BIG Future post #6 - New Materials Science . People don't realize just how much fascinating innovation is occuring with big ideas around materials ... this is a great example!
@philsherry@home.social I added alt text. I must admit, I always forget. It would be nice if the software I use @elk had a setting that I could apply that would require me to post alt text before submitting; and if that were a core feature in the Mastodon web interface as well.
Daily Inspiration: *"To survive the future you have to trust the algorithm but so far, the algorithm hasn't done a lot to earn our trust!*" - Futurist Jim Carroll
Can you trust the algorithm?
Particularly when you know that Rosie the Robot cheated? She did! Programmed to clean the floors, she swept the dirt under the rug when the Jetsons weren't looking!
If you can't trust Rosie, can you really trust anything AI-related? Through the many years that I've been talking about A.I., I've long been focused on both the potential upside and the downside.
*And as everyone is saying, we need to accelerate the conversation.*
@skettley If you engage, you'll get a lot more out of it. You'll only get out of it what you put into it. I followed 100 random people when I joined; then a hundred more; I chased diversity of thinking and variation of thought. And I must admit, I find my timeline extremely rich, wonderful, and rewarding.
I still don't have all the various subject matter experts that I need here, but I make up for that in other ways.
I'm on Post, and have a totally different experience.
@andrewstroehlein I'm verified; I've done stage keynotes with Biz Stone and others, and am booked by most of the large speakers bureaus in the world ... in the media, etc. All the things that make for a real person.
But I won't be paying either.
It continues to become toxic sludge, a dog's porridge.
