How will a pedestrian’s death shape the future of autonomous cars?

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Yesterday morning I was interviewed on the Today show on the implications of an Uber driverless car killing a pedestrian in Phoenix, Arizona. The segment is below.

The big picture

It is truly tragic that 1.3 million people are killed every year by automobile accidents (heavily weighted to developing countries, putting into context the already devastating death toll of for example 30,000 in the USA and 1,200 in Australia). By one analysis 94% of these deaths are caused by human error.
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Periodic Table of Disruptive Technologies and Innovation

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My colleague and friend Richard Watson and I have created a number of visual frameworks together over the years, including the Trend Blend series , the original Extinction Timeline and What will appear and disappear.

Richard has continued to create wonderful frameworks, with his latest a Periodic Table of Disruptive Technologies and Innovation (full size 9MB)


Click on the image for full size version (9MB)
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The Future of Associations: vision, capabilities and leadership for a changing world

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Last month I gave the keynote at the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Annual Board of Directors Strategic Retreat held in Panama City, Panama, on The Future of Associations.

IEEE is an august institution with over 400,000 members and an enormous impact on the technology industry globally, publishing over 170 top-rated journals, running 1800 conferences a year, and managing over 1000 standards, including WiFi.

All associations globally have been impacted by technological, social and structural shifts. IEEE’s board is on the front foot in understanding and addressing these issues, inviting me to speak on these changes and the emerging opportunities to help frame the discussions over their two-day strategic retreat.

A video of the full keynote has kindly been provided by IEEE.tv here.

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Exploring the future of homes: they will be our butlers and help us live longer

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A recent article The revolution that will change how Australians live within 30 years dug into the future of homes, based on interviews with some of “Australia’s top futurists” including myself.

Here are some of the quotes they took from me:
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Vectors of Disruption: a framework to clarify the key forces of change

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Yesterday I gave a briefing on Technology Trends and the Future of Work to a group of Non Executive Directors of major corporations, organized by a large professional services firm for its clients.

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
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The potential and dangers of the ‘autonomous economy’ where machines transact with machines

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Australia’s largest bank Commonwealth Bank has just released a very interesting white paper Welcome to the machine-to-machine economy, anticipating machines engaging in financial transactions with other machines or parties, for example hiring and paying for their own maintenance workers. This would require them to have their own bank accounts and payment systems.


Source: Commonwealth Bank
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Visual network map of MegaTrends to 2050

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Futurist Richard Watson and I have collaborated for many years on client projects and visual frameworks, including Trend Blend 2007, over a decade ago sparking the trend for using subway maps to display trends and their intersections.

Richard is still at it, having recently created a massive visual exploration based on the London train network of MegaTrends out to 2050.

Click on the image to see the high resolution version – you need to spend time on this to discover the details.

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Developing the political policies that will drive a prosperous future for jobs

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I recently was interviewed on ABC News about the future of jobs, in a panel dicussion with policy advisor Terry Barnes.

You can see a video of the interview below.


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First step is building quantum computers, next step is scaling them

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It was a great pleasure to get a tour of the University of New South Wales’ Centre for Quantum Computation today from Prof Andrea Morello.

The Centre was last year awarded A$70 million in funding from private and public sectors with the aim of achieving ‘10 qubits in 5 years’.
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#DeleteUber: How much will activism shape the on-demand economy?

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I was recently interviewed for a News Corp article on the Australian response to the global backlash on Uber.

I told the journalist in our interview that while I know a number of Australians who have deleted Uber, most Australians focus on the utility of the service. I was quoted:
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