NEXT TRENDS FADS "RULES" & TECHNOLOGIES

Time magazine's current (Oct 24,2005) cover is "What's Next".

Business 2.0's (October, 2005) current cover is "How To Ride The Hottest New Trends."

There are lots of ideas inside both magazines, though they do seem as random as the selections I make for what gets posted here in QPORIT, where the R is (explicitly) for RANDOM. (My project: How To Predict The Future is designed in part to show how to do this prognosticating more systematically.)


Some of the more plausibly important items discussed in Time are:

• Apple's innovation machine;
• The search for new planets / planet-like objects in the solar system (one issue: What is a planet?) and an article about removing trans fats from foods (those last two not actually part of the What's Next section),
• A discussion of brain mapping, and
• Clint Eastwood's next twin films on the battle of Iwo Jima.

There is also an interesting discussion about the Internet and other topics amongst a group of experts (Mark Dery, Moby, Malcolm Gladwell, Clay Shirky, David Brooks, Esther Dyson, and Tim O'Reilly), which centered largely on changes in communication (though the Internet, inexpensive phone calls, etc) and what it means for our society.


Business 2.0 discusses some technologies that are fighting competition for an important place in our economy, including

• HD radio -- competing with satellite radio,
• Wi-Max, one type of long range wireless competing with all the other types, and
• Micro fuel cells (fuel based power cells that are at least a few years away), competing with traditional batteries.

Amongst fads to ignore, they list "China Rules The World," leaving open, I guess, the possibility of "China Becomes Very, Very Important," and "Podcasting," where they simply point out that it has no revenue model (though in trends they include "DotCom-Era Ideas Finally Pay Off," although many of those had no viable business model when they first started either.)


Here are two additional things I think may be very important:

First, the ability of electronics to make anything that passes through the system persistent, together with data mining techniques that allow that information to be searched and organized, puts a tremendous strain on privacy. Not just now, but aggravated during every passing minute.

Second, there are currently several very promising research projects underway on personal medicine. That means, for example, using genetic information to personalize drug treatments, especially for cancer.

(Needless to say, these two items are inter-related. The techniques of personalized medicine combine with the techniques for organizing persistent data to increase the threat to personal privacy and, conversely, personal medicine would not be useful, or even possible, without modern computing power, including massive, persistent medical and genetic data, and data mining.)