Here are some of the quotes they took from me:

Futurist Ross Dawson says we will have relationships with our homes.

“They will gather far more information about us in order to be more responsive and to be a better home,” Mr Dawson says.

Like a good butler, he says our homes will be able to anticipate our needs, such as what time we wake up in the morning, the level we want the lights to be and what channel we want the TV on.

One of the most important ways this information can be used is to gather data and inform choices about our health.

This can happen in a number of ways, from toilets that analyse what we leave behind to mirrors that assess our skin and eyes.

This technology could even anticipate when someone is going to have a fall, or a heart attack, and Mr Dawson says it will be particularly useful for elderly people.

“It’s going to allow people to live longer in their own home rather than going to care facilities and that is going to change the structure of our cities and our society.”

I have spoken and written a lot before on these issues, including how we will have a relationship with our homes, take care of the elderly in their homes far longer, and broader insights into the future of homes.

They also quoted me on how immersive telepresence will in fact drive the rise of co-working spaces rather than replace them.

Mr Dawson says we’re less likely to work from a central office, but rather from home or a co-working space. He says technologies that allow “immersive tele-presence” will make this common.

“Essentially we can experience other people being in the same room with them, even if they are somewhere else on the planet,” he says.

While on the topic, I notice that in 2008 I shared excerpts from an interview with me on Predictions for the future of the home and immersive technologies. Here is a brief excerpt:

“The mouse was invented in 1967 and is still the centre of human-machine interfaces. It is also extraordinary that the QWERTY keyboard still dominates the lives of knowledge workers, despite the fact that 80% of the population cannot touch-type, which constrains economic productivity to an enormous degree.

“Voice recognition and response will become widespread. Large-surface interfaces such as the newly announced Microsoft Surface – and then beyond that, gesture and facial expression recognition – will usher in a far more intuitive and three-dimensional way of interfacing with information and images.”

Ten years later much of this is still yet to play out properly, but many of these technologies are finally beginning to move towards mainstream use.

Image: kainet

The group was the first to get a run-through of my new concept framework Vectors of Disruption, shown below, which I used to introduce and frame the rest of my presentation.

Click on the image for the full-size pdf

Some brief thoughts on the framework:

The first comment is that I – as many others – am not a fan of the word ‘disruption’, which has lost much of its meaning through misuse and overuse in recent years. However I cannot find a better word for what is meant here. I’m very open to other suggestions!

Overall the intent of the framework is to distinguish between the different layers that are driving disruption, from the underlying forces, through the high-impact developments and finally key structural shifts. These are often confused, making the mechanisms – or vectors – of disruption far harder to understand.

The framework is of course immensely simplified. There are many other elements that could have been included, such as demographics, however many of these will play out over a longer period.

Underlying Forces

The most common focus is on Information technologies, with past future exponential growth in Data, Processing, and Connectivity, which a long runway yet for these trends. Advancing Interface technologies are also critical in giving people far deeper engagement to information.

Technologies in other domains, including Materials, Health and Energy are also impacting not just these industries, but many others, including construction, infrastructure, manufacturing and transport.

Expectations are continuing to rise on every front. Societal expectations, notably of sustainability and accountability, seem to be shifting into higher gears. Customers are demanding powerful experiences and customization. Another important force is that of shifting Investor expectations, who not only expect consistent growth, but also scalability and constant renewal.

High-impact developments

Here we can catalog the array of technology buzzwords that soak through almost every business presentation you are likely to see this year, such as AI, Robotics, Big Data and VR. While these developments are hyped, they individually are likely to have a massive impact on business and society, and even more when they are combined. However there are also important non-technological developments, including Power to the individual and active Capital reallocation by investors.

Structural shifts

While it is bold to point to only two fundamental structural shifts in the economy, I believe they will be responsible for the majority of structural change in coming years.
Automation in manufacturing has already significantly played out, however we are really just at the beginning of the impact of automation – as the application of AI and robotics in a work context – on not just almost all job roles, but how organizations function.
Platforms are the fundamental mechanism underlying the network economy. Beyond the evident rise of marketplaces in transport, accommodation, work, and many other domains, platforms also encompass blockchain and crypto-currencies, open innovation structures, and new models of reintermediation.

Disruption

It is clear that these forces, developments and shifts mean that existing Business models are unlikely to be sustainable without changes, sometimes evolutionary, sometimes revolutionary. However we also need to focus on other domains of disruption, including Organizational structures, Urban structure, Education and the Role of Government. Perhaps most importantly there is potentially massive disruption to existing Social structures. Understanding and shaping this in positive directions – to the degree possible – is everyone’s responsibility.

Of course this framework only looks at the vectors and structure of disruption, not the responses or solutions. I will be creating other frameworks soon that focus on what we need to do to create successful outcomes in a disrupted world.

As always this framework is released as a Beta v1, not intended to be final, but a first attempt that will be refined over time if useful. So please let me know your comments, ideas, and constructive criticism so that can be incorporate into subsequent versions.

It was a very broad-ranging interview, however one of the topics I touched on was the concluding point of my keynote that afternoon, on governments as platforms.

I have written before about issues such as the role of crowdsourcing in government, how crowdfunding could shift the shape of taxation and government, how we can envisage the future of government as a solution enabler, and the value of a framework for the Transformation of Government.

As I have recently spent increasing time and attention on platform strategy, it has struck me that “government as platform” provides a clear and compelling vision for the future role of government.

The current view of government is of a set of institutions that take money from citizens in the form of taxes, and spend it to create social value. One of the most fundamental problems with this model is that governments are indubitably highly ineffective and inefficient at achieving the desired outcomes with the resources they have.

Governments should not be doing work that they do very poorly. They should be facilitators, enablers, catalysts, and orchestrators of value-creating interactions between citizens.

The starting point needs to be agreeing and understanding the social and economic outcomes we want, which can still happen through a political process that may not be dissimilar to current structures (though the shift to true participatory democracy is another important topic, to return to another day).

When we know what outcomes we want, we can design platforms that bring together participants to create those outcomes in the most efficient manner possible.

As a small example, HireUp enabling people with disability to find and work with their own support workers. The platform is able to enable the desired outcomes at substantially lower cost than any government body has been able to do. Moreover, since it enables people to find each other, it is far more likely to bring together people who will get on well with each other, rather than be randomly matched.

The idea of government of platform is by no means new. Tim O’Reilly has written and spoken about the idea at length, including an excellent book chapter on the topic. The UK government is currently discussing the topic, though largely from a narrower technological perspective.

Now that platforms models such as Uber, AirBnB, PayPal, Upwork, Tripadvisor, Lending Club and many others have not only helped people understand what platforms are, but also for us to develop far better principles for effective platform strategy, we are in a far better position to build not just the metaphor, but the reality, of government as platform.

The potential is exceptional.

Graham Kenny, President of Reinvent Australia, described the organisation as a collaborative initiative to create a conversation on a shared vision for the nation. The bottom line of its endeavors is to increase the quality of life for all Australians, by influencing government and business in how they work.

Kenny quoted Henry Mintzberg in a recent Harvard Business Review article, Rescuing Capitalism from Itself.

Kate Eriksson, Head of Innovation at PwC, described the landscape of the participants in creating a vision for the future of Australia, and noted that being polite is one of the biggest impediments to progress. The big questions are ‘What we can do? How can we do it?’

Oliver Freeman, Vice President of Reinvent Australia, talked about the crisis of parliamentary democracy, in which powerlessness is a recurring theme, resulting in a “manifestation of misalignment”. We need to realize James Surowiecki’s idea that collectlvely we are smarter than the elite few.

Michelle Fitzgerald, the newly appointed Chief Digital Officer of the City of Melbourne, spoke about using technology to reimagine our cities, to enable better human experience. The most important part is to co-create a vision for Melbourne as a smart city, with all stakeholders involved. Melbourne has many assets, including its open data platform, sensor on rubbish bins, and much more, but it needs to be ready for dramatic further change, including the impact of driverless cars.

Paul Schetler, CEO of the Australian government’s recently formed Digital Transformation Office, noted that the big difference between government and private sector is that government doesn’t participate in a market, they are sole providers of government services. There is an ethical imperative to provide the best possible services. We must do better. The costs of computing and storage have gone through the floor, completely changing the economics of service delivery. This opens up the opportunity to focus on service design.

Reinvent Australia seems like an excellent initiative, complementing existing efforts to form useful visions and catalyse action to build a better national future. I look forward to seeing what comes from the group.

Click on the image below to watch a video of the segment.


Over the years I have done work for clients on the future of homes and received media coverage for issues including our relationships with our homes and how homes will nurture and protect us.

In today’s program there was plenty to talk about on the predictions of new technologies in the bathroom, bedroom, kitchen, and living room.

However at the end of the interview the question came up of what happens when the technology doesn’t work?

This is a point that was addressed in my report for Intel Security on Safeguarding the Future of Digital Australia in 2025.

For all the wonders of what technology can do for us, we need to be sure not to become dependent on it.

A very pointed example is digital locks. They may be secure, but if there is any system failure, we may not be able to get into our own homes.

There are many issues that need to be addressed, not least backup plans that function even if there is no electricity or an operating system failure, as well as contingencies for systems malfunctioning.

Good design can certainly address these issues and provide us with security and control even if technology malfunctions. However we need to recognize that good design is not always prevalent, or built-in to all components of the systems we build.

As technology moves to the heart of every aspect of our lives, we need to be sure that we maintain full control, even when our beautiful home of the future crashes.

The CITIE Framework examines 9 different areas in which cities can support entrepreneurship and innovation, shown here:


Source: City Initiatives for Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship report

Each of these factors can be mapped on their importance to entrepreneurs, but also on the ability of cities to influence them. The report doesn’t look at the factors for which cities can have little short-term impact, such as house prices and quality of life, and focuses on the domains where they can implement initiatives that will have a real impact, such as access to customers, cost and availability of workspaces, and networking opportunities.

The report goes on to look at the 9 factors in detail, including ranking the relative success of each of the 40 cities covered in the study, and then goes on to provide a summary ranking of the position of each of the cities in driving innovation.

There is much that city governments can do to drive innovation; this report provides an excellent framework and analysis to support those initiatives.

You can view a video of the segment by clicking on the image below.

We primarily discussed the fantastic Wikihouse project, which provides Creative Commons plans for parts which can be 3D printed or machine cut and readily assembled to build inexpensive homes.

The genesis of Wikihouse was in addressing housing affordability in the UK, however it is now a global movement, enabling both individuals and communities to inexpensively build homes.

Open source concepts are at the heart of the project, freely providing plans with a license that means that improvements must be shared back with the community.

Yet this approach for house-building is only enabled by 3D printing and machine cutting, allowing digital plans to be easily made into the components from which the buildings can be constructed.

Open source evolved from the world of software and has now been applied across many other domains including physical objects.

3D printing has until recently been limited to fairly small-scale objects, however this is being rapidly scaled up.

Given the broader scope of these technologies, housing seems like an obvious application, and Wikihouse a fantastic initiative in this space.

Where else can open source plans and 3D printing be applied to bring value to communities?

It’s an excellent report, bringing together contributions from leading researchers from Australia and globally, looking at the exceptional challenges of the changing landscape of work, and some of the policy prescriptions that will help nations and their citizens to prosper.

One of the highlights of the report was an analysis of the likelihood of automation replacing jobs in Australia, adapting the methodology used by the Oxford Martin Institute in examining the risk of job losses in the US.

The Australian study looked at the likelihood of different job sectors being replaced by automation.

Source: CEDA

The report notes:

40 per cent of current jobs have a high probability (greater than 0.7) of being computerised or automated in the next 10 to 15 years. This is a lower figure than that for the US (50 per cent) – we believe due to smaller numbers of workers in the service sector – and is comparable to the UK.

The study went on to look at the geographical distribution of potential job losses, extending on the methodology of the original report.

The report notes that in fact physical labor and machinery operation have a high chance of being automated, meaning that in fact highly physical industries such as mining will significantly disrupted.

Regions with high dependence on mining (Western Australia and Queensland in particular) will suffer a bigger impact from automation and computerisation.

Within cities such as Sydney, shown above, the knowledge-intensive inner city will be least affected, while the edges of the city are likely to be more affected. The authors say:

These… simply underline many of the messages in the national data: The jobs that will remain will most likely be those in professional, technical and creative areas.

it is critically important to convey to policy makers the degree of potential impact of the automation of jobs. However digging deeper to look at specifically what kinds of jobs are at risk, and the regions and even suburbs that will be most affected, start to provide real insight into the policies and actions that need to happen now to mitigate risks and seize opportunities.

While daytime TV isn’t an ideal form to discuss all of the ins and outs of big issues, we did start to discuss some of the advantages of driverless cars. Some of these are:

* Safety. Humans are highly fallible, as self-driving cars improve we can be confident they will in the (vast) majority of cases be safer than human drivers.

* Vehicle efficiency. Driverless cars can be continually operational and do not need to be tied to a single driver, meaning we can have far fewer vehicles.

* Fuel and road efficiency. Self-driving cars can be designed to be far more energy-efficient, and once there is a sufficient proportion of self-driving cars on the road, they can interact with each other to create optimal road efficiency, reducing traffic jams and travel time.

* Time and attention. Across major cities globally, average daily commute time is an hour or longer. This adds up to two weeks of waking time a year that is available for work, entertainment, or socializing.

* No drunk driving. Depending on your perspective, this creates far safer roads, or more opportunities to over-indulge.

* Free up parking spaces. Self-driving cars can drop people off and trundle off to somewhere convenient. The massive amount of parking in prime destinations can be freed up for better uses.

Of course there is not only upside. Beyond the technological, regulatory, and financial issues that need to be addressed to get driverless cars common on the roads, there will be a real impact on jobs as drivers transition to other work, as well as the reality that technology is vulnerable to compromise.

There is a very high degree of uncertainty on the pace of adoption of driverless cars, as it is driven by regulatory change. While four states in the US, UK and France are allowing driverless cars on the road for testing, suggesting that other countries could follow suit and the technology rapidly become widespread, that could easily change.

However the social and environmental benefits are compelling. Let’s make it happen.

One of the themes was Cities Reconfigured. The section began:

Urbanisation has proved to be a dominant global force, shaping both developed and developing countries. We know cities are both spreading out and become denser at their centres, but radical shifts are now reshaping the structure and shape of cities. The rise of flexible, remote and freelance work and shifts where and how people shop and socialise are significantly changing travel patterns. The widespread deployment of data sensors is providing real-time insights into environmental, traffic and infrastructure conditions, enabling rapid response and a deeply-needed increase in urban efficiency.

In highly summarized form, some of the most important shifts reshaping cities are:

Changing work
Work is becoming increasingly location-independent, with employees dividing their time between traditional offices, home, and co-working ‘third spaces’ that provide attractive collective work spaces far closer to home. Many more people will work independently or across a portfolio of activities, while many low-skilled service jobs will be replaced by new high-touch roles.

Shifting retail
As more purchasing of everything from fashion to groceries moves online the mid-tier of retail will shrink, leaving highly localized offerings and larger complexes that incorporate not just shopping and entertainment but also work and community centers.

Community at the heart
Always-on digital connection is, paradoxically, driving demand for real community and connection. Retailers, property developers and even banks are recognizing that they can only succeed if they support the drive for community, with local social networks supporting a shift from government to citizens in providing vital social support.

Networked transport
Car sharing, ride sharing, and new driver networks are providing lower cost and more efficient alternatives for travel, while driverless cars could transform how people move around. Collective public transport will increase in importance, but cities will vary enormously in their success at meeting demand for attractive, comfortable systems. However the context is that transport needs could be dramatically different from today.

Public data
The explosion of data available on everything from micro-traffic trends to air quality and even commuter moods – almost all shared publicly – will enable the design of government and commercial services that support efficient use of resources.

Environmental imperative
Well-designed dense urban living has a substantially lower net environmental impact than a more distributed population, however people will only want to live in cities if they are clean and beautiful. Thoughtful development and restructuring will shape urban environments.

Many people and organizations are acting with an implicit belief that cities will have similar shapes in the future that they have now.

However fundamental forces are reconfiguring the very nature and structure of how people live together in major urban centers, and there is a long way further for these forces to play outt.

Image credit: Twelvizm