There seems to be a common theme at SXSW. Many of the sessions being fascinating, terrifying, but at the same time tinged with hopeful optimism, which I suppose if a pretty good reflection of the culture at large right now.
The sessions I attended on day two certainly reflected the need to be considered, cautious and deliberate with the technology we adopt and how pervasive we, as a culture, allow it to become in our lives. You’ll probably note a bit of a whole system/human centric theme below.
Author Malcolm Gladwell and Chris Urmson, CEO of Aoura, cordially butted heads over the future of self-driving vehicles. There were lot’s of stats thrown around, but the key takeaway for me was that self-driving is nothing to do with driving. Emerging are two distinct states for road use, ‘driving’ and ‘being driven’. Which we choose will be context dependent. There will still be, for the foreseeable future, be a subset of people who want to drive for pleasure. What self-driving will do is take away the need for mundane or dangerous driving. Looking for parking, driving through the night, etc. Self-driving, therefore, is about all the things you can do in a car when you’re not driving. It’s not much of a stretch to get to the implications for things like media consumption, as well as how we work.
A theme that was touched on during the self-driving session continued in a later discussion of ‘black swan events’. The reason I bring this up separately is that it’s not strictly a self-driving problem. It’s a connected world problem.
We need to factor in and plan for scenarios where, for example, PNT, (positioning, navigation and timing) technologies are compromised. What are the implications for a system-wide failure of GPS? What happens to food supplies when ships can’t doc? When tractors can’t operate? Fuel supplies can’t get where they are supposed to? Scarier still, this kind of breakdown doesn’t necessarily have to result from the activities of bad actors. Simple human error, such as a truck driver using a $19 GPS jammer so they can keep driving for longer, (rules say they have to take breaks on a specific schedule for safety purposes) shutting down the control tower at a major airport, (true story).
Amy Webb, Founder of Future Today Institute, knocked the ball out of the park with her Tech Trends session. What’s even more impressive is that she only scratched the surface of the mammoth report containing 315 trends! A very brief take below on just some of the content Amy discussed.
- Amazon’s ‘Indoor plant factory to table’ — You’ve all heard of ’farm to table?’ Well, the effect of unstable weather patterns on traditional farming and the global food supply will mean access to certain foods, and even the ability to produce it will be massively impacted. Couple this with Amazon’s massive inner-city real-estate footprint, expertise in logistics and ability to seemingly win at whatever they turn their hand to. It doesn’t take much of a leap to see grocery, long haul food transport, international imports and domestic farming all being affected. I’d like to think the customer pushback on this would be strong. Recent trends towards slow food, organics, etc. Hell, Amazon itself acquiring Whole Foods. However, when climate change limits options for ‘real food’, and the desire for avocado on toast is still strong, I’m not so sure. Watch this space.
- Privacy is dead — This is continually developing trend, bio-metrics technology is advancing at frantic pace, including more advanced recognition and analysis; facial, voice, gesture, bone, vein, expression, (the list goes on). Amazon, for example, is looking at using Alexa to analyse tone, cadence, coughs, sneezes, volume, etc. to assess if you’re sick, or what kind of mood you’re in. “Would you like me to order you some cough syrup?.” New ‘persistent recognition systems’ will come into play. Shopping trolleys who’s handles measure things like heart rate and matches it to our speed and location in the supermarket for example. The wealth of data soon available to organisations will require some real thought about how we govern and regulate it, both on a governmental and personal level. Behavioral biometrics combined with the ability to ‘nudge’ users to action will proliferate.
- Companies are vying to collect and house the genetic data we’ve so freely given up to companies like 23&Me in recent years. This has a positive implication for search and analysis in the medical communities, but it’s not hard to see where it could be misused.
Amy emphasised a point we’d all do well to remember. That trends evolve as they emerge. The hypothesis is likely to be different from the reality, and as actors react the situation will change. The point? That we need to develop mechanisms for continuous listening, analysis and action.
One of the key theme apparent in many of the sessions I attended on day two was the need to look at what’s going on in adjacent industries to your own. From a creative standpoint, asking how might we apply learnings and technology to our context. However, more pointedly through the lens of disruption, you are doing your organisation a disservice If you’re not keeping a constant vigilant watch on how changes in one industry might impact some aspect of your value chain.