Civic technology, more than ever, will be at the heart of democracy and effective government

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Civic technology, often called CivicTech, is usually defined as technologies to enable constructive engagement between citizens and government. However I frame it more broadly as technologies that help us create a better society.

I think the distinction is important, as even in these times of enlarged government roles, I believe the future does not lie in an artificial separation between government and citizens, but rather in government as an enabler for people to efficiently, compassionately, collectively create a better society.
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What should we call the next phase of humanity beyond this crisis? Assessing the catch phrases

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We are living amidst a frightening global pandemic that we are working hard to contain and move past as quickly as possible.

So what comes on the other side of this phase? We need to be thoughtful about what we call it.

I have compiled a list below of some of the front-runner phrases, with my thoughts on their relative merits.
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What the road back to resuming air travel will look like

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One of the biggest differences between now and a few months ago is that scheduled flights have almost ceased, from over 8 trillion kilometres travelled in 2019 (an average of over 1000 km per man, woman and child on the planet).

Recently I wrote 9 insights into the future of air travel in a post-coronavirus world, summarizing my thoughts on the potential pathways to the resumption of international travel.

A nice article last week in Business Insider on what air travel may look like after the pandemic drew on interviews with “a variety of travel experts, travel agents, and one futurist”, to include my thoughts.

Below are my comments that were featured in the article:
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The amazing opportunity of balancing home, office, and ‘third space’ work post-coronavirus

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A couple of days I was a guest on ABC’s The Drum program. One of the questions I was asked was the degree to which we will continue to work from home after the pandemic.

For my response watch the brief video below, or see the full program online, this segment starts at 45:00.

Below the video I describe in detail the forces shaping the relative roles of home, office, and ‘third space’ in a post-coronavirus future of work.
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Adaptability and entrepreneurial spirit will rebuild employment after over 100 million jobs are lost

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The chart below of weekly initial US unemployment claims puts into context the scope and scale of the economic and employment impact of the pandemic.

The long horizontal scale of chart, giving us temporal perspective, actually hides the extent of the problem, with the spike at the end in fact comprising three weeks of new unemployment claims of first 3.3 million and then the last two weeks at 6.6 million, for a total of 15.6 million.


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Massive falls in marketing and advertising – how and when will the market come back?

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The evidence is now in on what was already clear: the advertising and marketing industries are getting slammed by the coronavirus pandemic. However there are ways that the industry, particularly from an advertiser perspective, could reinvent itself.
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Could the pandemic lead to global cohesion and a maturing of humanity?

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When I searched my blog for mentions of pandemic, one mention came up in a post I wrote in 2014 on Four scenarios for 2030.

One of the scenarios from that exercise may be enormously relevant today.
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9 insights into the future of air travel in a post-coronavirus world

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Since I do significant work on the future of travel, I was sought out for an interview earlier today about the future of air travel, something very much up in the air at the moment, one could say!

Below are some of the points I shared with the journalist.
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Transitioning from the initial terror phase as new COVID-19 cases plateau in some countries

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The good news is that over the last week new cases are plateauing or even reducing in many countries, including Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Australia, and a range of Western European countries.

Of course new cases are still rising alarmingly in other countries, most notably the US, though also in UK, Canada, and France.

The chart below shows the last 10 days of data on new cases from a selection of countries, using two different scales to help make sense of the range of the data, and avoiding logarithmic scales as it is hard to visually interpret for this kind of data. Commentary on the implications below.
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The race heats up between Facebook and Apple to create the next big thing after smartphones

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News is just out that Facebook has locked up an exclusive deal with microLED leader Plessey to supply next-generation micro displays to power augmented reality glasses. Read on for the context and implications…

Beyond smartphones will likely be smartglasses

After the TV and desktop came the laptop and tablet and then the smartphone. The progress of our interfaces with technology and information will not end here. The most obvious contender for the immediate successor to the smartphone is some form of augmented reality glasses.

I have been writing about the potential of augmented reality glasses for over a decade, even being honored at the top of a list of ‘failed’ tech predictions for the 2010s for my prognostications in late 2009 of AR as a core form of human augmentation.
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