Breaking news form the future by Thomas Frey , ( Google’s top-ranked futurist speaker) , Professor Gerd Leonhard ( Visiting Professor at the Fundacao Dom Cabral in Sao Paulo / Belo Horizonte, Brazil ), Dick Pelletier, (CEO Positive Futurist)
Prosumerzen in Imponderabilia-polis i proud to publish three of the most brilliant futurists in the world: Thomas Frey , ( Google’s top-ranked futurist speaker) , Professor Gerd Leonhard ( Visiting Professor at the Fundacao Dom Cabral in Sao Paulo / Belo Horizonte, Brazil ), Dick Pelletier, (CEO Positive Futurist)
Today we talk about the food sustainability for the future , ( T. Frey), the distribution democracy and the future of the media,( Prof. Leonhard), the future of the of healthcare: stem cells, genetics, remote monitoring , Regenerative Medicine,( D. Pelletier).
1) Direct to the People – Bypassing the Brokers by Thomas Frey , ( Google’s top-ranked futurist speaker)
Direct to the People – Bypassing the Brokers
It has always seemed outrageous to me that in a world where so many people are dying of obesity, that we can still have an equally unacceptable number of people dying of starvation.
Approximately 25% of the world’s population is overweight and 13% of the world goes to bed hungry every night. Yes, we have gone from 26% of the world population being undernourished in the 1960 to 13% today, but it remains an intolerably high number.
The problem doesn’t stem from a lack of food. World agriculture produces 17% more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70% population increase.
The principal problem stems from governments that repress economic activities and archaic distribution systems bottlenecked by local powerbrokers that would rather see people die than lose an opportunity to make money.
Emergency rations airlifted into famine-stricken regions often suffer from the same powerbroker issues that prevent desperate people from receiving the food that was intended for them.
For this reason, I would like to explore the idea of a novel delivery system that would involve airdropped rations with an external packaging that would form an airfoil when dropped to insure a broad scattered pattern of distribution. Here is how it would work.
Traditionally, emergency rations have been packaged in cardboard boxes and placed on wooden pallets in much the same way grocery stores receive their food shipments. Food is placed in boxes, boxes are placed on pallets, and forklifts are use to load and unload trucks and cargo planes.
The delivery system on the shipping side demands a similar system on the receiving end once shipments have been delivered. This insures that people who have control of forklifts and warehouses also control the overall distribution of the food.
Direct to the People
The idea that I would like to propose is a new type of packaging for emergency rations where the outer shell of the container opens into a broad-wing airfoil when dropped from a certain altitude, and the delivery pattern of the boxes would insure a broad distribution on the outskirts of a village.
As the boxes are dropped from the plane, the rushing airflow will cause the outer layer of the box to separate, and through the use of attached cords, the descending air-packs will be influenced by updrafts and other air currents as they are parachuted into their final resting place, waiting for desperate people to find them.
Ideally the container itself will have secondary uses among the villagers once its initial purpose is fulfilled. Boxes can be used as storage containers, forms for making blocks to build houses, or many other things. The wings can be made of cardboard or fabric that can later be used for clothing, bedding, and other things that only the villagers will understand.
The true innovation here is the direct-to-the-people distribution system. This type of system will also create many other opportunities that go far beyond solving their immediate need for food and sustenance.
“Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish
and he will eat for a lifetime. Teach a man how to build a fish cannery
and he will transform an entire village.” – Karl Dakin
Beyond Food, Solving Poverty
No one really knows how many people are malnourished. The statistic most frequently cited is that of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, which says that 925 million people are undernourished.
In round numbers there are 7 billion people in the world. Thus, with an estimated 925 million hungry people in the world, 13.1 percent, or almost 1 in 7 people are hungry.
That’s a huge number.
At the same time, roughly 50% of all the food in the world goes to waste. Small percentages of food are lost in the farmer’s fields, on trucks and through delivery systems, in food processing plants, on store shelves, and in our own homes. Altogether, these inefficiencies add up to another huge number.
By placing the source of the food production closer to the consumers, some of this waste can be eliminated.
So, rather than just drop-shipping food into a village, what if we were to drop-ship micro-farms that local people could convert into tiny centers of food production?
What if the box contained a number of fishing poles and nets to improve their ability to fish and feed themselves?
What if the box contained cell phones, tablet computers, small generators, batteries, satellite dish, and the ability to communicate with the outside world?
The “Hole in the Wall” Experiments
Two weeks ago in Ankara, Turkey I had the privilege of being on stage with Professor Sugata Mitra who serves as the Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University in the UK. He has become famous for his ingenious “hole in the wall” experiments in India.
In 1999, Professor Mitra embedded a computer in a wall in a slum in New Dehli, connected it to high speed internet and left it there. Kids in the area, mesmerized by this technology, learn to use computers by themselves.
Over time his work has become famously referred to as the “Hole in the Wall Experiment.” He repeated this experiment in other parts of India and discovered how kids learn what they want to do.
His online videos of kids interacting with these computers have become the source of considerable discussion with one showing children recording music and playing it back for others only four hours after seeing the computer for the first time.
One experiment he did in Hyderabad, India involved asking kids who spoke English with a strong Telugu accent to use a voice recognition system on a computer. Since it didn’t recognize many of their words initially, he told them to speak so the computer could understand them. And then he left.
When he returned two months later, their accents had changed and were closer to the neutral British accent required by the speech synthesizer. They had found an online dictionary with an audio pronunciation feature that enabled them to hear the words and refine their own speech patterns.
If computers, cellphones, and other technology were parachuted into some of the world’s most desperate places, what long range impact would it have?
From my conversations with Professor Mitra, there is no doubt that this approach would have a dramatic and transformative effect on the people.
Rethinking Micro Farming
Over the coming weeks the DaVinci Institute will be spearheading an unusual project where a groups of visionary thinkers will be asked to consider what micro-agronomy might look like in the future. One idea that I will be presenting will be the notion that small, self-contained micro-farms be packaged in such a way that they can be drop-shipped into small villages in Africa as I’ve mentioned above.
We often place significant limits in how we see the world around us. Is it possible that one small idea like this could change the entire world?
Well, if we think about it, that’s the only way that changes happen in the world.
It has always seemed outrageous to me that in a world where so many people are dying of obesity, that we can still have an equally unacceptable number of people dying of starvation.
Approximately 25% of the world’s population is overweight and 13% of the world goes to bed hungry every night. Yes, we have gone from 26% of the world population being undernourished in the 1960 to 13% today, but it remains an intolerably high number.
The problem doesn’t stem from a lack of food. World agriculture produces 17% more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70% population increase.
The principal problem stems from governments that repress economic activities and archaic distribution systems bottlenecked by local powerbrokers that would rather see people die than lose an opportunity to make money.
Emergency rations airlifted into famine-stricken regions often suffer from the same powerbroker issues that prevent desperate people from receiving the food that was intended for them.
For this reason, I would like to explore the idea of a novel delivery system that would involve airdropped rations with an external packaging that would form an airfoil when dropped to insure a broad scattered pattern of distribution. Here is how it would work.
Traditionally, emergency rations have been packaged in cardboard boxes and placed on wooden pallets in much the same way grocery stores receive their food shipments. Food is placed in boxes, boxes are placed on pallets, and forklifts are use to load and unload trucks and cargo planes.
The delivery system on the shipping side demands a similar system on the receiving end once shipments have been delivered. This insures that people who have control of forklifts and warehouses often control the overall distribution of the food.
Direct to the People
The idea that I would like to propose is a new type of packaging for emergency rations where the outer shell of the container opens into a broad-wing airfoil when dropped from a certain altitude, and the delivery pattern of the boxes would insure a broad distribution on the outskirts of a village.
As the boxes are dropped from the plane, the rushing airflow will cause the outer layer of the box to separate, and through the use of attached cords, the descending air-packs will be influenced by updrafts and other air currents as they are parachuted into their final resting place, waiting for desperate people to find them.
Ideally the container itself will have secondary uses among the villagers once its initial purpose is fulfilled. Boxes can be used as storage containers, forms for making blocks to build houses, or many other things. The wings can be made of cardboard or fabric that can later be used for clothing, bedding, and other things that only the villagers will understand.
The true innovation here is the direct-to-the-people distribution system. This type of system will also create many other opportunities that go far beyond solving their immediate need for food and sustenance.
“Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish
and he will eat for a lifetime. Teach a man how to build a fish cannery
and he will transform an entire village.” – Karl Dakin, Senior Fellow, DaVinci Institute
Beyond Food, Solving Poverty
No one really knows how many people are malnourished. The statistic most frequently cited is that of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, which says that 925 million people are undernourished.
In round numbers there are 7 billion people in the world. Thus, with an estimated 925 million hungry people in the world, 13.1 percent, or almost 1 in 7 people are hungry.
That’s a huge number.
At the same time, roughly 50% of all the food in the world goes to waste. Small percentages of food are lost in the farmer’s fields, on trucks and through delivery systems, in food processing plants, on store shelves, and in our own homes. Altogether, these inefficiencies add up to another huge number.
By placing the source of the food production closer to the consumers, some of this waste can be eliminated.
So, rather than just drop-shipping food into a village, what if we were to drop-ship micro-farms that local people could convert into tiny centers of food production?
What if the box contained a number of fishing poles and nets to improve their ability to fish and feed themselves?
What if the box contained cell phones, tablet computers, small generators, batteries, satellite dish, and the ability to communicate with the outside world?
The “Hole in the Wall” Experiments
Two weeks ago in Ankara, Turkey I had the privilege of being on stage with Professor Sugata Mitra who serves as the Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University in the UK. He has become famous for his ingenious “hole in the wall” experiments in India.
In 1999, Professor Mitra embedded a computer in a wall in a slum in New Dehli, connected it to high speed internet and left it there. Kids in the area, mesmerized by this technology, learn to use computers by themselves.
Over time his work has become famously referred to as the “Hole in the Wall Experiment.” He repeated this experiment in other parts of India and discovered how kids learn what they want to do.
His online videos of kids interacting with these computers have become the source of considerable discussion with one showing children recording music and playing it back for others only four hours after seeing the computer for the first time.
One experiment he did in Hyderabad, India involved asking kids who spoke English with a strong Telugu accent to use a voice recognition system on a computer. Since it didn’t recognize many of their words initially, he told them to speak so the computer could understand them. And then he left.
When he returned two months later, their accents had changed and were closer to the neutral British accent required by the speech synthesizer. They had found an online dictionary with an audio pronunciation feature that enabled them to hear the words and refine their own speech patterns.
If computers, cellphones, and other technology were parachuted into some of the world’s most desperate places, what long range impact would it have?
From my conversations with Professor Mitra, there is no doubt that this approach would have a dramatic and transformative effect on the people.
Rethinking Micro Farming
Over the coming weeks the DaVinci Institute will be spearheading an unusual project where a groups of visionary thinkers will be asked to consider what micro-agronomy might look like in the future. One idea that I will be presenting will be the notion that small, self-contained micro-farms be packaged in such a way that they can be drop-shipped into small villages in Africa as I’ve mentioned above.
We often place significant limits in how we see the world around us. Is it possible that one small idea like this could change the entire world?
Well, if we think about it, that’s the only way that changes happen in the world.
2) The Distribution Democracy and the Future of Media by Professor Gerd Leonhard ( Visiting Professor at the Fundacao Dom Cabral in Sao Paulo / Belo Horizonte, Brazil )
A few hours ago, a friend of mine emailed me, lamenting a story that CNN was passing off as breaking news, even though it was far from being either news or newsworthy. His displeasure reminded me of a conversation I had with serial entrepreneur and startup guru Steve Blank when he came to my office to tape an interview. As we sat there waiting for the cameras to roll, we talked about what media is in this post-broadband, always-on world. I told Steve that the problem with most media companies is they define themselves by the product they hawk. Music television, CNN, Breaking News, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, ESPN or whatever — these are all products that define the media companies behind them.
And therein lies the problem. Unless media corporations stop defining themselves by their products, they are going to be unable to navigate the big shift that is changing the rules of the game — what I call the “democratization of distribution.”
Let’s talk about the television business for a minute. During the early days of television, access to spectrum determined who owned and operated the networks. CBS and ABC became the gatekeepers of attention — whether it was through 60 Minutes, Wide World of Sports or some other such program. Hit programs essentially ensured that viewers “attention” switched from one channel to another, and with it, the advertising dollars.
Then came analog cable and we saw the emergence of more media entities — for example, HBO, ESPN and CNN — which siphoned away attention from broadcast networks to all these new entities. With digital cable, attention got sliced and diced even more, but still the scarcity of “spectrum” inside the cable network pipes meant that there was finite amount of channels available.
Then came broadband, which essentially removed any channel scarcity. The distribution, which had been in the hands of a few large media conglomerates, was suddenly available to everyone. Today anyone, even talentless acts such as Rebeca Black can upload their video to YouTube and become instant celebrities. Justin Bieber, too, is a product of this channel-less revolution.
Just like television, we have seen the same drama unfold in the music, radio, newspaper and magazine industries. The gatekeepers of attention have been disrupted.
“Over 5 or ten years, fiber optics and the wireless explosion will completely crush the business models of old media companies and industries,” Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, said in an interview with McKinsey & Co. “For companies focused on content and distribution, distribution just goes away.” Schmidt rightfully argued that there is no need to think of content types by the distribution network they are tied to, because there will be one single network.
Media, as far as I am concerned, has been and will always be a game of attention. A few years ago, during the go-go years of the 1990s, Forbes or Fortune magazine had all our attention and thus were able to monetize that attention by selling tons of advertising against it. CNN could charge premium dollars during its heyday. The New York Times informed us (especially the New Yorkers) and held our attention and was able to monetize it.
Broadband and lately wireless Internet has changed the dynamics of attention. Rebecca Black (with her “Friday” video) and Foursquare are now media, thanks to their ability to grab our attention. Similarly, if people spend all their time scanning through photos on Instagram, then that too is media.
The distribution democracy, which has been accelerated by the emergence of wireless Internet and smartphones, is putting that capability in the hands of tens of millions of people, and we are starting to see the disruptive impact of that in our society.
There have been endless debates about the role of Twitter and Facebook in societal and geopolitical dramas, but I think they are merely tools that have thrived and have enabled changes because the distribution of information has been unshackled, a point so well argued by my colleague Mathew Ingram and New York University media professor, Jay Rosen.
Your Attention Please
One side effect of this distribution democracy is the sheer volume of information that is coming at us from all sides. The torrent of information threatens to drown us and encourages short-term thinking. In a speech earlier this week, Andrew G Haldane, an economist who works for the Bank of England, said:
Information is streamed in ever-greater volumes and at ever-rising velocities. Timelines for decision-making appear to have been compressed. Pressures to deliver immediate results seem to have intensified. Tenure patterns for some of our most important life choices (marriage, jobs, money) are in secular decline.
These forces may be altering not just the way we act, but also the way we think. Neurologically, our brains are adapting to increasing volumes and velocities of information by shortening attention spans. Technological innovation, such as the World Wide Web, may have caused a permanent neurological rewiring, as did previous technological revolutions such as the printing press and typewriter.
If that is indeed the case, and I do believe it to be true, then the concept of what is media needs to be rethought and re-imagined — and that also means that we need to start rethinking our tools of measurement and methods of monetization. And as for my friend who lamented about the quality of content on CNN, he should probably get used to it. With increased competition for attention, he can expect even more of the trivial bits as part of his info-diet.
3) Future of healthcare: stem cells, genetics, remote monitoring by Dick Pelletier, (CEO Positive Futurist)
National Institutes of Health director, Francis Collins recently stated that major improvements would be coming to our healthcare. Doctors will increasingly use genomic profiles and patient lifestyle data to develop more personalized strategies for preventing, detecting, and treating disease. Other experts predict that stem cell therapies and remote monitoring devices will also play important roles in America’s healthcare future.
To turn these views into reality, experts believe that we must: 1) further understand how to make stem cells grow into new tissues, blood, and organs; 2) develop genetic systems to help solve emotional and physical health issues; and 3) create remote monitoring devices that offer patients more control over their healthcare.
Stem Cells – a government report, “2020: A New Vision – A Future for Regenerative Medicine” declared stem cells to be the evolution of healthcare. Officials claim that, “Regenerative medicine will lead to creation of tissues and organs to replace body parts damaged by disease, injury, or congenital anomaly.”
This report encouraged the military to create the Armed Forces Institute for Regenerative Medicine, http://www.afirm.mil/, with an assertive goal to provide hands, muscles, skin; even new faces, for injured veterans. Although Congress is facing huge economic deficits this year, lawmakers could not reject a program that promises to save wounded soldier’s lives. AFIRM received commitments for $100 million.
When told that this science could create new hands and faces without need for anti-rejection drugs, and patient skin cells could be used to heal burns, and grow new noses, ears, bones and muscles, Surgeon General of the Army, Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker commented; “It’s almost a science-fiction world.”
Positive futurists believe that within 10-to-20 years, this wonder tech will enable doctors to rejuvenate body parts damaged from disease or aging; even wrinkled skin might one day be replaced with young resilient skin. Could the ‘Fountain of Youth’ finally become reality?
Though more research is needed to realize all the hopes and dreams of this ‘stem cell magic’, progress is advancing exponentially; especially in areas of creating dissolvable housing systems (templates) that direct stem cells to grow into specific parts, such as hearts, livers, pancreas, muscles, bones, eyes, skin, and teeth.
However, researchers have noticed that stem cells degrade in quality as people age, and this has prompted a Colorado company, Stem Cell Backup, http://www.stemcellbackup.com/, to offer people the ability to “bank” their stem cells for future use. Founder Patrick O’Malley predicts that as research in this futuristic technology progresses, stem cells will become the most dominant force in 21st Century healthcare.
In another breakthrough, Las Vegas, NV scientist Walter Goldstein and partners, Warren Miller and Robert Risacher are developing a product called IVRBC, http://www.ivrbc.info/, which starts with stem cells that become red blood cells. By extracting stem cells from patient skin, doctors, for the first time, can create unlimited blood supplies properly matched to patient needs. This process would treat diseases like anemia, and many blood and bone marrow disorders. Goldstein believes they could gain FDA approval by 2018.
Genetic Profiling – have you ever wondered why it’s so difficult to lose weight or change bad habits; or questioned whether the prescription drugs and vitamins you gulp down every day really help? Analyzing genes, a new medical science unfolding in today’s high-tech world, give doctors an inside look into your physical and emotional health issues and enables a more accurate evaluation to prescribe treatments.
Since sequencing the Human Genome, drugs custom-designed for each person has been the dream of caregivers everywhere. Lower personal genome costs expected by 2015 or sooner, will allow physicians to treat more diseases, and determine the effectiveness of their patient’s current healthcare regimens.
Remote Monitoring – other technologies on the horizon include devices designed to keep patients out of the hospital and get them more involved in managing their own health. San Diego cardiovascular products developer, Corventis, http://www.corventis.com/us/default.asp, recently completed clinical trials with PiiX, a disposable device that sticks to patient chest’s like a Band-Aid, collecting heart rates, fluid status, and exercise and posture habits. The data can be accessed by doctors 24/7 for live phone or text consultations.
By 2020, America will shift towards an improved, personalized, and mostly preventative healthcare policy. Sensors will soon appear in clothing and inside bodies, detecting everything from cancer to an impending stroke, heart attack, or even the flu. This approach will allow doctors to stop most diseases before they start.
Here’s hoping that the medical advances mentioned in this article may one day help every reader enjoy a long-lasting healthy life full of vim, vigor, and enthusiasm.
Thomas Frey , ( Google’s top-ranked futurist speaker) , Professor Gerd Leonhard ( Visiting Professor at the Fundacao Dom Cabral in Sao Paulo / Belo Horizonte, Brazil ), Dick Pelletier, (CEO Positive Futurist) biograpies and links to their web pages at : http://prosumerzen.net/external-editorial-partnerships-contributions/
