Google Wave is taking the world by storm. Almost everyone has heard of Google Wave. The buzz around this product is so strong, it even dominates investor’s interest groups. I am very positively surprised at the actual demo. They prophesize this as the Google Maps of email. Google Maps digitized maps and route finding. I do think it will have an impact. And an impact at least as big as Google Maps. But I don’t imagine the impact to be on email. Google Wave will change the way we communicate, but it will take many many years. And by the time we are all Waving we forgot the generator was Google…

In our future studie “Future of Network” we discuss the upcoming network society, a paradigmatic change that moves from atomic scientific universal thinking to fragmented contextual contingent thinking, or as Alan Moore calls it: from straight line thinking to no straight line thinking. Some artists are visionaries, ahead of time, and give us an insight in the future. Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) was such an artist. His life and work are the embodiement of the paradigmental change we are wittnessing today and the exhibition in the Kunsthal, the first Giacometti exhibition in twenty years in the Netherlands, can be considered in my opinion a sign of the new thinking emerging. Do you see other signs around you in the public sphere?

A recent local debate was dedicated to the future of education. English sociologist Frank Furedi argued for a return to conventional and traditional values like the authoritative teacher, knowledge as truth and the challanges of intellectualism. On the other side of the spectrum education futurist John Moravec arguedd that knowledge is becoming widely available through new technology and that education will become more about being able to process that knowledge into creative and innovative ideas. What’s your opinion?

Varying from Hegemonic-cycles, Kondrativ-waves to Perez innovation-curves, we have been studying these theories for their predictive capacity. Not only as a framework to select in which phase we are but also to maybe discover something about rythm? Last week we added Neil Howe to that list with his 4th Turning or generation-cycle theory. The current crisis brings much debate on this subject especially wether this ‘recession’ is part of a (kutznets) business-cycle or if it might be a clash of cycles? To further understand this issue I’m doing quite some research on cycle-theories and wanted to share the following nuance: There are several kinds of theories of history have been prominent in recent discussions ending theories, wave theories, and cycle theories.

Microsoft has announced it will discontinue its Encarta product line. Not really a surprise, considering the rise of Wikipedia as a source quality information. But I wonder why they discontinued it already. It might be that this product is ‘hemorrhaging cash’, to use the words of Alan Moore. But we might be witnessing the first skirmishes of a strategic repositioning. Encarta is a high overhead, traditional product. But what low overhead, innovative product will be replacing Encarta? Is Microsoft going to compete with Wikipedia? Or, as they state in their discontinuation notice, are they targeting education primarily? Interesting to note that one of the areas where Jimmy Wales envisions a Wikipedia transformation is education…

The Tata Nano is advertised as the “people’s car” and was launched this week in Mumbai amid a lot of controversy. Many have claimed the arrival of the world’s cheapest car as an “eco-disaster,” refereing to the hundreds of millions of potential new owners that the Nano’s affordable price tag will generate, resulting in a explosion in carbon emissions. Proponents argue that the Tata has the potential to replace many of the dangerous scooters that dominate Indian roadways, and also produce a large share of the transportation polution and danger. Is the Western commentary full of hypocrisy? 70% of all passenger and commercial motor vehicles in the world belong to Western countries, this accounts for only 15 percent of the world’s population. Maybe in stead of criticizing Indian consumers for pursuing more secure modes of transportation, we should focus on developing public transportation systems that are safe, reliable, and sustainable in both industrial and developing countries alike?

The impact of the current crisis is becoming well visible in society. After a stream of banks and financial organisations getting into troubled water, other sectors are now affected as well. A general believe is that when this crisis is over, it will leave open a space for innovations, a space on which the new future will be build. The technology sector in the Netherlands for example is at the moment forced to let go of personnel, but last in line to be sacked are the researchers and developers. This way companies try to ensure knowledge capital to be preserved, which will form the breading ground for future development. But how do you determine what will be the valuable aspects in your sector in the upcoming future? What, for instance, will be the unique and determining element in the success of a media company in the future?

Recycling is maybe on of the most conventional sustainability strategies. We recycle our paper, glass and clothing, but what about our knowledge? On a ‘view FRWD’ meeting I recently met someone who is working in recycling market research. The idea is that there is a lot of information in market research that is not specifically relevant for the primary subject of the research, but might be very valuable when put in a new context. Evaluating and reinterpreting ‘old’ research is expected to lead to new ideas and products, a relatively cheap and effective strategy. Which makes me wonder, how much valuable information or other ’side products’ are there to be found in the cellars of businesses. I guess living in a knowledge economy makes this waste what manure is for farmers, so how are we going to recycle all that knowledge?

The financial ‘world’ has been driving progress from a certain wisdom. Even though we didn’t really understand what we were doing with products like derivatives, we all thought they worked. In cosmology we have the same situation. We have a model (the concordance model) that we can satisfactorily use to calculate and predict. But it gives no clue what the universe actually is. We actually can only ’see’ 4%, the other 96% is dark, matter or energy. How to deal with a system of which 96% is unknown, only inferred?