How drones could build real-world networks to transform delivery of food, medicine, mail, and more

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The rise of drones (unmanned aerial vehicles) has been at the forefront of the news over the last months, with issues emerging that range from the remote use of military force to domestic privacy.

However there are many very positive applications of drones. Matternet, spawned from a Singularity University program, envisages creating a network of drones to address developing world problems. Over a billion people are geographically isolated and are often not able to access regular transport and the goods that can travel to them. Rather than building physical infrastructure, drones can cheaply and easily allow drugs, food, and other essentials to get to where they are needed. The video below shows the Matternet Vision.


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A new world of (lack of) privacy: Here’s looking at you with Google Glass

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The discussion is heating up around the forthcoming Google Glass augmented reality glasses and what will almost surely be a wave of similar devices from other companies.

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Much of the conversation focuses on the ability of Google Glass to continuously capture video of wherever its user is looking. Following an insalubrious bar in Seattle announcing Google Glass-wearers would be banned from its premises, we are seeing the launch of handy Google Glass Ban Signs for whoever else wants to ban Google Glass, along with its potential for pervasive video capture.

A nice piece in Sydney Morning Herald titled Through the looking glass into the future does a nice job of reviewing the state of the nation on the topic.

The article quotes me:

Australian futurist Ross Dawson said that people largely accepted widespread video surveillance, but ”the idea of individuals recording video wherever they go is more pointed and uncomfortable”.

He said the technology may be the final straw in the erosion of privacy that sparked a social uprising and new legislation, but it was more likely that people would become used to ”a world in which almost everything they do is visible”.

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New Prezi: The 45 elements of the Future of the CIO framework

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One of the ways in which I use the frameworks I create is as a foundation for my keynote speeches. Since in many cases the frameworks are designed to distil the key ideas in a domain into a single graphic, they can provide a valuable lattice and flow for the ideas in a presentation.

Visual presentation tool Prezi can be a great way to do this, in showing the logic and structure of the framework through the presentation, while allowing me to zoom in through the presentation to illustrate the specific detailed concepts.

I have used Prezi in this way for keynotes on The Transformation of Business and The Transformation of Government.

For the current Tomorrow-Ready CIO series of events run by CIO Magazine and IBM I am using Prezi to run through my recently created Future of the CIO framework. The Prezi is below.


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Launch of Future of the CIO framework

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Over the next few weeks I will be giving the keynote at the Tomorrow-Ready CIO Series organized by CIO magazine and sponsored by IBM. The events will be held over breakfast in Canberra, Perth, Sydney, Auckland and Melbourne, with an audience of CIOs and other senior IT executives. Full details on the events here.

My keynote will be on the Future of the CIO. I have recently pulled together my thinking on the topic, drawing in particular on a series of CIO workshops I ran across Europe last year.

Below is the Future of the CIO Framework that I will be sharing at the events. It is now up on my complete list of visual frameworks on RossDawson.com.

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Click on the image for the full-size pdf
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Our future depends on the humanization of work

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One of the reasons that my focus is increasingly shifting to the future of work is that it is in fact a large part of the future of humanity. And if we don’t get this right it might not look pretty.

The two primary drivers of a changing work landscape in coming years remote work and work automation. Almost all work will be able to be done anywhere, and a growing proportion of today’s jobs will be supplanted by machines.

The replacement of human workers by machines is of course a large part of human history, and so far we have consistently created new jobs faster than old jobs have disappeared.

However machine capabilities – including robotics, spatial cognition, and natural language processing – are developing so fast that there is a real chance that there will be insufficient new jobs to replace the ones that disappear.

In the ebook Race Against the Machine, authors Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, both of MIT, describe the challenge of the inexorable rise of machines in the workplace, concluding with a rather gloomy view of our ability to respond.

John Hagel of Deloitte’s Center for the Edge has made a great video responding to the book’s ideas.


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Parallel entrepreneurship goes mainstream

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Back in the 1990s I became enamoured of Bill Gross’s IdeaLab, which was spinning off new web companies initially housed in its own support ecosystem. I loved that it generated and developed its own projects rather than looking outside for ideas.

Since then I’ve closely followed what I’ve thought of as “parallel entrepreneurship”, in contrast to the usual concept of serial entrepreneurship: establishing many ventures rather than doing them one by one.

Despite many leading lights saying that founders should be focused on one venture, I’ve always believed that it is possible – albeit extremely difficult – to launch and run multiple simultaneous ventures.
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The 6 capabilities that drive future business value from Staggeringly Enormous Data

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I recently participated in a panel interview on SkyNews of “some of the brightest minds in business technology”, including futurist Mark Pesce, commentator Brad Howarth, and myself. It’s just come out on the web and having now been able to watch it I think it turned out to be a very interesting discussion.

To see the video click on the image below.

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After covering some of the major trends of 2012 towards the end of the panel we turned out attention to what was coming in the year ahead. When asked what I thought needed to be on the business agenda, my response was Big Data, or as I more accurately described it, Staggeringly Enormous Data.
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The future of academic certification: universities, MOOCs, aggregators, and peer reputation

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This morning I gave the opening keynote at the Virtual Universities: Impact on Accounting Education Thought Leadership forum in Adelaide, organized by the Centre of Accounting, Governance and Sustainability at University of South Australia and the Institute of Chartered Accountants Australia. The audience was an invitation-only group of the most senior accounting academics and industry practitioners in the country.

My keynote was on the broad global context for the current changes in education. After looking at major technological, social and structural changes, the future of work, and shifts in learning, I turned to the role of certification and credentials.

The rise of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) has helped bring into focus that universities have to date always bundled together three things:
– Education;
– Certification; and
– Networking.

The rise of Open Courseware and more recently services such as Coursera, Udacity and edX has now broken out (part of) the education piece.
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Judging the best visualizations of the future: Enter the BBC What If? competition

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This year BBC is focusing on the future under the theme What If? and has just launched its What If? Visions of the Future competition.

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Image source: BBC News/ Glenn Hatton
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Today show: when will we entrust child care to robots?

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I was in Sydney over New Year (nowhere better to celebrate it!) before heading off for holidays, and was invited onto the Today national breakfast program to talk about some of the themes from my 2013 and Beyond Appearing and Disappearing framework.

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

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One of the ideas they wanted to talk about was “robo-nannies”. We originally dreamed of robots that could do more than help with manufacturing and mechanical processes, and we are now on the verge of robots being engaged in what we consider very human functions. However there are a number of elements required before we entrust our children to robotic nannies.
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