Saturday: Maps of the Future, Surfing the Sixth Wave

Today I went to a lecture at Birbeck College, UCL, on long term technological changes, run by the London Futurists.

The first half of the lecture consisted of a short description of how futurists work and produce results, which was fascinating. They tend to work on four axes; political, economic, social and technological.

The second half of the lecture consisted of examining the idea that there will be a "golden age" of new technology starting in 2030 based around a scarcity of resources. These will be food, energy and water, mostly caused by increasing urbanisation, changes in climate and growth in population. The technologies are things like recycling, energy efficiency, energy storage (batteries in particular), and alternative energy sources.

One of the more interesting ideas was illustrated by the following:



Technology adoption/prevalence/success follows a certain path. The Crisis of Maturity in this case was the .Com bubble bursting in the early 2000's. The maturity phase is more a case of roll-out, what Gibson alluded to when he said that "the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed".

All-in-all it was a great lecture which didn't seem like the two hours it was.