3-Plus
Consumer platforms that embed communication between 3 or more things – apps, systems, appliances, vehicles, homes, the “cloud,” the human body or the human brain.
4th World
The long-accepted, 20th Century delineations between Developed and Developing or Less Developed (3rd) World markets are being challenged in the face of rapid geopolitical change. This is the emergence of a 4th World – the combination of developed and developing markets into a more structurally flexible and adaptive model.
Accumulous Cloud
Data-rich clouds that regenerate and change shape as they collect more and more information.
Alien Eyes
Seeing the world objectively as if you experienced it for the first time.
Asterisk marketing
Recognizing the market potential of niches that are less than one percent of the population, usually reflected in tables as an asterisk.
Auction Economy
People increasingly buying on bid and offer prices.
Aug-virt-ising
The combination of augmented reality, virtual reality and marketing/advertising. Frontiers in digital technology providing an entirely new canvas on which marketers and advertisers can paint.
Augmented Humanity (AH)
The total enhancement of humans through combinations of wearable, embeddable, implantable and ingestible technology.
Awhereness
Being aware, but not sure where – whether in reality or in a virtual environment or in a combination of both.
BAANGFUEL
The combinations and recombinations of Bits, Atoms, Anitmatter, Neurons, Genes, Frequencies & vibrations and Ultra/infra spectral Energy & Light which are leading to whole new materials, sources of energy and life forms.
Betweenity
The increasing frequency and amount of time that people find themselves between life stages, either professionally, maritally or even regarding chronological ages.
Big Syster
Systems, networks, structures, electronic devices and virtual entities that are able to connect wirelessly, without human inclusion, leading to more complex and fully independent meta-systems.
Biopolitics
The belief that human political inclinations and behaviors are largely genetically determined.
Blue
Going well beyond “green,” this is putting back into the ecology more benefit than what was taken out.
Blinders and Blunders
With the growing amounts of information now available, more people are using – or having imposed on them – blinders to minimize or remove the possibility of distractions.
Bored Games
The focus is shifting away from attention-deficit to formal studies of boredom. Better integration of the concepts of fun, gaming and play will be important in the struggle against chronic boredom in the future.
Brains Race
This new “Cold War” is less about an “arms race” and more about attracting or growing the best and brightest brains.
Chimuspanic
The power centers of the world, especially affecting the strategies of the U.S, will increasingly emanate from a country (China), a religion (Muslim), and an ethnicity (Hispanic).
ChiSci
China’s ongoing path towards scientific deployment, innovation and advancement, which is posing a challenge to the historical scientific dominance of North America and Europe.
Cityficiency
With more than half the human population on earth now living in cities, urban areas must become hyper-efficient in order to both deal with massive human inflows and remain competitive well into the future.
City-Starts
Dense cities that are emerging as important startup epicenters. The location of startups is a key indicator of innovation, entrepreneurship and economic growth. In 2016, 30% of the world’s economy and most of its innovation were concentrated in just 100 cities.
Civilization Alpha
We are on the threshold of an entirely new civilization, one in which we can destroy the entire planet, leave the planet, and/or rise to an entirely new culture that transcends anything we have known before.
Climatequake
A growing consensus that climate change will have serious impacts on the economy, the environment and human health.
Collaborative Class
Rising up on the strength of collaborative consumption (or the “shareconomy”), a new breed of worker is valuing a series of “micro-jobs” over one single, linear career.
Communichasms
A vast, growing gap between the maximization of our issues and the minimization of our abilities to talk – and think – about them.
Comployment
Consumers are increasingly asked to help shape the decisions made by companies, and employees are increasingly being marketed to in order to retain top talent. Consumers are becoming more like employees, and employees are becoming more like consumers.
Confluential Scarcity
Concurrent forces acting over time to create a systemic situation from which scarcity will emerge. This creates dislocations in supply that were not always historically scarce, and need not be in the future.
Congestion Paradox
Congestion is on the rise even though population growth rates in most industrialized countries are declining.
Connectomapping
The Internets of all things will extend intelligence exponentially, deciphering the intentions between humans, systems and things. This will lead to a global map of connections.
Cope-ability
Essential for living in our rapidly changing, information-saturated world, this entails a complex set of skills that encompasses successfully dealing with managing tasks, people, situations and problems.
Corporation 3.0
Large and long-established corporations facing a marketplace mandate to audit and overhaul much of what they do, and how they do it, in order to remain sustainable and competitive in a vastly different operating environment.
Counter-Aging
As a result of vast scientific and technological advancements, it is possible to reverse age-related conditions. Getting old has for the first time become a conscious choice.
Crimestitution
While cybercrime and the black market economies (e.g., counterfeiting, sex trafficking, laundering, smuggling, piracy) are still very much alive and well, many of today’s criminals do not even bother staying underground.
Critical Combos
The overlapping of different demographic sub-groups into a single critical mass; e.g., single Asian women earning over $75K per year, professional gay couples with a pet, urban seniors taking classes.
Cusp Cultures
With rapid change, people are increasingly splintering into entirely new demographic, psychographic and ethnographic (or a combination of all three) subcultures.
Customer Castes
The segmentation of customers based upon their current or assumed profitability.
Cybrids
What many call “Generation Z.” Going well beyond “digital natives,” this is the first human generation on earth to have a fully symbiotic biological, psychological, cognitive and emotional relationship with the digital world around them.
Datasmiths
The many workers who, unlike those in traditional data analytics and data mining, are much more creative, and much more involved in every aspect of everything, everywhere. Datasmithing will create whole new opportunities in the areas of data capture, data visualization and data utilization, and almost every job and profession will involve becoming, in some way, a datasmith.
Death’s Digi-Dilemma
The dilemma that occurs when we try to tackle the question: What happens to our digital identity when we die?
Demographic Narcissism
A substantial percentage of young people today are the only children in their household. The lessons that young kids learn by having siblings (e.g., knowing how to share and compromise) are hard to impart to an only child.
Digital Psychosphere
In 2002, we coined the term psychosphere – a subset of the biosphere in which all the feedback loops intersect with mental models and emotional contexts. Increasingly, the psychosphere is profoundly – and directly – influenced by digital technology. It has, in fact, begun to morph into a digital psychosphere — shaped, and fueled, by the rise of affective computing.
Design Space
Design is going to be a major competitive advantage in the future. Design is not just about the end product anymore — it must be embedded into every aspect of the product or service from the beginning, altering our entire perception of the space around us, a product or a service.
Digital Abacus
The world of digital technology operates within a certain framework, but just like the individual beads on an abacus, the combination and recombination of possibilities is endless.
Dividual
As opposed to the individual, this refers to the person who today can be many kinds of persons, fitting into many different demographic and lifestyle categories.
Defrocking of the Traditional Priesthoods
A trend begun with the introduction of the Guttenberg printing press, which allowed the Bible to be distributed widely, diminishing the power of priests. The accelerated dissemination of information has had the same impact on all professions that used to profit by controlling specialized information: accountants, lawyers, doctors, financiers, etc.
Denaissance
Focusing financial, intellectual and creative capital on solving problems and warding off crises as opposed to regeneration and renewal. (The opposite of Renaissance.)
Diamonding
The real process of aging. No longer about rigid and similar metals, as in “the golden years,” or the “silver generation,” massive populations of those over-65 are defined by their compression over time into diamonds: multi-faceted with no two exactly alike.
Digital Tribalism
Mobile devices are enabling strong ties to be reinforced. Aside from family and friends, they are forming “tribes” based around people who share genomes, beliefs or lifestyle choices.
Eclectica
The extraordinary combination of beliefs and entities which are dominating the marketing and the social fabrics.
Educated Incapacity
The baggage of accumulated knowledge that makes you incapable of change. The older you get, the more knowledge you acquire, and the more mental baggage gets loaded into your consciousness. That consciousness shapes thinking, beliefs and problem-solving techniques. In order to thrive — and ultimately survive — on this fast-paced journey through the 21st century, people need to selectively and accurately shed this educated incapacity.
Effreshency
The implementation of new and “fresh” strategies that improve upon and revolutionize traditional thinking about eight distinct areas of organizational performance that are often viewed separately: Efficient + Effective + Innovative + Adaptable + Inclusive + Accountable + Sustainable + Profitable = Effreshent.
Enterbrainment
Using brain research to enhance the human brain by making it better and to improve human performance.
Extreme Leisure
Beyond sports, this includes all the adrenaline-fueled activities we do in our spare time that are edgy, or risky.
Eco-Lingua
It is no longer about who is talking, but rather what is talking. The evolution of language is engulfing all aspects of our ecology. The transformation of language now is increasingly about the two-way interrelationship between humans and machines, and between machines and machines.
Educational Alchemy
Akin to traditional alchemy, we are fast entering a new era of educational tinkering that seeks, ultimately, to turn what are increasingly lower value outputs (educated youth of today) into higher-value outputs (educated youth of tomorrow) that are better equipped, both intellectually and emotionally, for the world and workplace of the future.
Emotile Economy
Emotile is a combination word, putting together emotion (the focus on heightened concern for personal well-being), and motility (the impermanent, fast-moving short-lived mobility of all relationships and ways of organizing). The Emotile Economy began in earnest around 1992 and rose to dominance around 2005.
Era of Indig‘Nations’
We are moving full-speed-ahead into a truly global era of indignation. Protest, civil unrest and other conflicts have been a reality of the world since the beginning of human civilization. However, what we see today, facilitated by digital technology, is the profound genesis of indignation on a global scale in a manner like nothing seen before.
Extremes Inform the Middle
The extremes of the curve inform and reshape the middle. This enables companies and organizations to predict with some degree of certainty the likelihood of a deviant group’s becoming mainstream. To predict where the middle will wind up, it is essential to free your mind of one-sided traps and objectively consider both extremes.
Feedback Frontiers
The ways in which systems and people transmit information back and forth is changing. Non-carbon life forms, new social conventions, new frontiers of scientific knowledge and multiplying inter-connectivity are altering the future of interpersonal relations, as well as the ways in which we receive and transmit feedback and construct our models
FITS
Fear of Invisible Threats. For many in the world, invisible threats (e.g., potential terrorism, communicable disease, identity theft, personal hacking) are multiplying, and increasing numbers of people are becoming continually stressed knowing about, dealing with or worrying about those threats.
Flip Generation Leadership
Many of those in their late 20s and early 30s are ascending to senior management and executive positions. Frequently, they will be superior to their elders, some by more than a 25-year age difference. Thus, leadership generations will “flip,” and the implications are staggering.
Fractials
What were once opposites we might now call “fractial” (using the word as an adjective). Fractials (using the word as a noun) are not compromises, or halfway points, or locations along a spectrum. They are fundamentally different, and on another plane. They create new dimensions of the original concepts. This includes gender, political parties, properties of materials and reality itself.
Generica
Many tools, trends and developments are increasingly removing the distinctions between otherwise and earlier differentiated entities and brands.
Genomenet
Where all of our aggregate genetic data is inextricably linked and accessible through transparent networks.
Gerontopoly
The burgeoning industry and economy created by the billions of people around the world who are, or will be, over 60. Gerontology is the study of aging and the elderly. Gerontopolis is now a city comprised of older persons. Gerontopoly describes the body of business, research and built and engineered initiatives emerging for and around the aging peoples of the world. .
Global Urbanexus
For the first time ever, more than half the world’s population lives in cities — and that percentage is increasing. We have long been moving toward a world oriented more around city-states and less around nation-states. However, we now see signs that the future will be even more about the interconnectedness between these cities.
Globans
The counterbalance to proximals, this is the increasing segment of the population not only educated and employed outside their country of birth, but who also travel and live abroad more frequently, and support truly global business and commerce.
Grassroots Groupthink
The concept of groupthink is evolving, moving from that of a prevailing point of view imposed from above, to that of a perspective arising from individuals, on a grassroots level, until it is absorbed and adopted by the larger group.
Gravity Principle
The inability of people to leave the orbit of the larger institutions, enterprises and societal structures that organize them. This is true in the corporate world, but we also see manifestations of this in politics, family and household formation, and other social realms.
Green Shoots Effect
Mimicking plants, the actions people take to get around obstacles (mostly those of a bureaucratic nature). The ability of individuals, organizations and governments to continue to function in the face of seemingly paralyzing impediments.
Green-to-Blue
A spectrum of activity that goes from Doing Green (e.g., engaging in eco-friendly initiatives) to Being Green (taking the entire value chain into account to ensure having as close to a net-zero impact on the ecosystem as possible) to Blue (putting more back into the ecosystem than was taken out in the first place).
Gridnet
Tomorrow’s power and financial grids organized much like today’s Internet, with decentralized and distributed networking.
Imagistructures
The components of the built environment that reflect the reimagining of the way we design, develop, maintain and interact with our infrastructures.
Infomediaries
Online agents that help safeguard personal information.
Influenca
The evolution of viral influence, persuasion and authority. Ideas spreading in new ways, and geometrically faster. The evolving people, institutions and entities who gain our trust as influencers, and to whom we assign authority.
Inner Space
The understanding of what makes living things tick. Whether about people, plants, animals or the planet, we are peeling back the veils to reveal brain, mind, spirit and soul.
InNetitude
The trend toward greater inability to communicate in person, alongside the growing obsession to be constantly communicating via portable communications devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets). Social ineptitude is on the rise, and reliance on digital technology has played a significant role in this.
Innovocracy
A global renaissance of innovation, fueled by democratization, massive problems like financial, climate and energy crises, and the rapid development of low-cost enabling technology.
Integr8ted Human (The)
The integration and interrelationship of humans with artificial, organic and virtual elements. The 8 distinct areas of the “integrated human” reflect the growing understanding of the subconscious and conscious, the biological and the psychological, the organic and the inorganic, and the real and the virtual.
Inter Space
The development of new and diverse “nets” that draw inspiration for their engineering and design from the architecture of the Internet itself (e.g., the Internet-of-Things, the Matternet, the Genomenet and the Makernet).
LEAPFROG
An acronym for: Light & Energy; Aerial (internet, drones); Printable (3D printing); Free (wi-fi); Remittances & Open mobile payment/savings platforms; and Gender-based (female entrepreneurs). Developing countries have the opportunity to LEAPFROG the West in terms of future economic development.
Legislack
The growing inability of government to keep up with change and establish the proper balance between the public good and commercial imperatives.
Lego-Bio
The organization that excels at reconfiguration and adaptation by adhering more to a biological model than a mechanistic one, and rearranging itself and its parts based on circumstances.
Libertarian “Me” Corps
A new model of libertarian-inspired capitalism in which individuals avoid traditional institutions and processes. One clear manifestation is an entirely new entrepreneurial ethic where people voluntarily choose to relinquish, but profit from, their own personal data.
Makernet
Real things connected to each other, through both humans and software, using the existing infrastructure of the Internet. The growing makernet of 3D printers could disrupt the future of manufacturing, shipping and retail.
Manchines
Human energy is now increasingly combining with far more intelligent machine energy. The boundaries between what will be done by humans for machines, and what will be done by machines for humans, are blurring.
Mankind to Mindkind
The movement of intelligence out of the human realm exclusively, and the shifting focus on the mind rather than the body. Instead of hiring whole people for the more creative work, organizational resources will shift to accessing minds, whether real or virtual.
McFaith
Beliefs, religious systems and practices pieced together to fit a particular point-of-view, behavior or matter of convenience.
Mediapeds
People become media on two feet — continually carrying technologies that mediate the external world.
Membriosys
More than big data, smart systems and artificial intelligence (AI), the knowledge in the world is becoming a complex, growing, engulfing, fully-integrated, fluid, dynamic and potentially conscious being.
Metaspace Economy (The)
The Metaspace Economy is the economy we are moving into. It is marked by its removal from the tangible. All of the growth industries are related to “altered dimensionality” with that dimension being related to space. There are 10 emerging growth areas – these will be where value is derived in the future, the areas where jobs will be created and where disposable income will go (Inner Space, Outer Space, Micro Space, Cyberspace, Time/Space, Design Space, Green Space, Storage Space, Play Space, Inter Space.)
Metaspatial Workforce (The)
As digital technology spreads, the classic relationship between rising output and rising employment now appears broken. The sheer pace of change is making it difficult for the formal workforce to play ‘catch-up,’ and whole new skills, competencies and work processes are being adopted.
Microspace
Science at the nanoscale, including BAANGFUEL and 3D/4D printing. The combinations and recombinations of these will affect retailing, computing, energy, transportation, healthcare, the environment and materials technology.
Mighty Mash-Ups
Combining two or more seemingly unrelated businesses, activities or properties is not new. However, the scale, scope and impact of the combinations now taking place are huge.
Millenniat (The)
The socio-economic class made up of insecure, disconnected young, living without certainty or predictability, in a world of increasing income inequality and lack of economic mobility.
Mind Music
The rapid progression from mind-reading technology to mind-directed AR devices is now taking another evolutionary step forward: the mind-directed creation of original, multi-sensory “works” that could revolutionize our concept of music, design and the arts.
Mindnet
Will all of humanity one day link to a collective, global brain? The noosphere refers to such a sphere of human thought – and humanity’s eventual transcendence to a higher form of collective intelligence. Many people believe that our bodies will one day link to an external computer.
Multi-Plane Reality
The marriage between the tangible and the intangible is replacing a two-dimensional (single plane) consumer brand experience, with a more three-dimensional (multi-plane) one.
Misleading Indicators
The ability to predict consumer sentiment and behavior is no longer a given using any of the standard instruments, and the traditional leading indicators have been incorrect.
Modular Biology
The mixing and matching by humans of their own biology, not only to suit them (e.g., cosmetic augmentation, enhancement) but also to save them. We are approaching entirely new frontiers in implantation, transplantation, genetics and medicine.
Mortality Horizon
The length of time in one’s life which extends from the adult age when the first 5% of one’s age cohort has died off to the point when the last 5% of the cohort will die off. Currently, most adults in the industrialized world have a mortality horizon of 50 years (from age 50 to 100) in which they could either die at any time or live for decades.
Multimoney
All of the various forms of financial equivalents, including reward points, coupons, virtual currencies, local currencies, cryptocurrencies, barter, tweets, and even good health and expanded social networks.
Nanny Colonialism
Colonialism justified by cultural, military and economic superiority is being replaced by colonialism justified by moral superiority to nations that oppress their people, degrade the environment, or allow systems to collapse.
Nanonarcissism
The intense focus on self has now evolved into an expectation of personalized attention to every detail of one’s life.
Nation Inc.
The switching of the roles between nation and corporation. Corporations being looked to, for example, as promoters of human rights and explorers of space, and to be surveyors and surveillors of the public. Nations, on the other hand, being looked to as the providers of jobs and/or work equivalents.
Neohumans
These include (1) Intelligent, learning robots and avatars, (2) Human/non-human chimeras created in laboratories and (3) Language-capable members of the animal kingdom.
Neolescence
Children are getting “older” quicker, but young adults are remaining “children” longer.
NetLash
Concern over, or push back against, concentrations of influence and authority. The belief that some entities are too large to serve the needs of their foundational constituents. This includes concern over the concentration of influence and power held by a handful of technology companies.
“Net Movement” (The)
Long before we defined “Inter Space,” we identified that there will increasingly be a “net” for everything, and that enterprise intranets will increasingly resemble mini-Internets.
Neurochinery
The marriage of the brain and the machine, as the fields of brain research and computer and software development converge.
Newrative
Storytelling and narrative, aided by the rapid proliferation of new media platforms and technologies, making a quantum leap forward (e.g., through the use of VR, drones, e-sports, etc.)
No-Go Green
Vacationers who are shifting their travel preferences because of a heightened awareness of the negative environmental effects of travel.
Non-Carbon Life Forms
Networks, robots, software, smart structures, electronic devices and virtual entities are now all making decisions in the workplace, the marketplace and the home.
Non-Linear Life Trajectory
Life is less likely to follow a linear path. The idea that there are clear beginning, middle and end stages to someone’s life is shifting, and we will continue to move away from linear narratives in many aspects of our lives.
OneWork
The world is increasingly about working one-person jobs, one week or year at a time, one skill base at a time, from one career to another over time, for one client or customer at a time, in one-person households. This all leads to a more punctuated, isolated, self-reliant workforce and marketplace.
Otherapies
Alternative avenues of response/therapy (e.g, VR, nature, artificial emotional intelligence, environmental design, etc.) that are emerging to deal with generalized stress and anxiety.
Paraficiency
Where at least one revenue opportunity has been exploited based around a new or existing adjacency. The world today is being disrupted, more than ever before, by what we might call paraficient models (with the prefix “para” taken to mean: alongside, beside, near or adjacent).
Pediatragics
The litany of the threats that are looming as children are at growing mental and physical risk.
Perceptible Social Good
The covert and subliminal codes, signals and roadmaps by which people learn what is appropriate for maintaining the social good. These are perceptible when seen in the everyday surroundings, messages and behavior of individuals and institutions.
Perkolation
The act of innovating existing — and inventing new — perks.
Platformia
The Internet-of-Things may actually become the Intranets-of-Things. Inter-operability may be unrealistic, as competing platforms create their own proprietary programming languages and sub-universes of connections for competitive or jurisdictional purposes.
Play Space
Gamification, the application of game mechanics in a non-gaming environment, will increasingly permeate everything around us – including marketing, the workplace, education, decision-making, incentives, rewards and payments. And, adult play will become an area of renewed focus for those looking to build livable cities and cultivate productive work environments.
Pop-Starts
Pop-up businesses, particularly in the digital realm, are transforming entrepreneurship. Today’s furious pace of change characterizes who starts businesses, the types of businesses they start and why those businesses are even started in the first place.
Post-Democracy Autocracy
The idea that institutions are excluding citizens of the Western world from having a voice. This leads to serious questions about participation, power-sharing and representation in decision making.
Potemkin People
A Potemkin Village is a “pretentiously showy façade intended to divert attention from an embarrassing or shabby condition.” People today seem increasingly to be putting Potemkin facades on themselves, using plastic surgery, image consultants, coaches, tutors, and online tools.
Pretailing
The extraordinary revolution taking place on the front-end of retailing. The setting up of a buy and sell situation has gotten farther away from the traditional marketing and sales channels, spurring wholly new messaging and businesses.
Prifecta
The combination of RFIDs, smartphones and geographic positioning is creating new ways to monitor and track consumer behavior, supply chains and product inventory. The growth of embedded systems and their interconnectedness raises major privacy implications.
Prime Metrics
The measurements gotten by bypassing the secondary and inadequate means of figuring out everything from behavior to economic systems to health. Going to the primary sources will include such things as brain mapping, new molecular understanding, exploring alternate frequencies and even spiritual discovery.
Proximals
The counterbalance to globans, this is the population segment defined by their comfort with — and desire for — that which is nearby, local, familiar, indigenous and traditional.
Quirky Leading Edge
There are countless quirky behaviors, trends, and social groups sprouting up across the world. It appears that the “leading edge” or epicenter, of quirkiness is in Japan. Many of these odd adaptations and emerging subgroups will be a harbinger of similar things to come elsewhere.
Recirculative Design
The combination of regenerative and nature-inspired design + environmental circularity + zero waste & toxicity + rapid technological and scientific innovation. A framework for overhauling how products are designed, built, sold, consumed and disposed of.
Recallity
Recall refers to the retrieval of events or information from the past and is one of the core processes of memory. But despite our efforts to remember past memories, our “recallity” is oftentimes not synonymous with reality.
Relusion
The vaster and faster churning out of illusions. Day-by-day, as communications and discoveries speed up in a whirlwind of change, we face massive conflict between what was thought just yesterday and what will appear as real in the next 24 hours.
Retrotopia
An idealized, retro world of tangible “things” and fashions that provides an escape for young people turned off by a threatening world they did not necessarily create and they do not always like.
Right-of-Way
How companies can change their models to shift profitability away from their core businesses in order to leverage previously undervalued opportunities. This is achieved by both having and controlling access to numerous distribution channels including customers, suppliers, creditors, investors, employees, and so on.
Risk in the White Space
Risk that may not have been predictable beforehand and/or risk that does not tie back to clearly liable entities.
SCOURS
Sound-Cloaked Outdoor Urban Recreational Spaces. The study of acoustic ecology may eventually be coupled with the study of acoustic cloaking as a way to control noise pollution and create more aurally-pleasing public spaces in urban environments.
SEET
Security & Ethics of Emerging Technology. The skillset of those who can assess and manage the implications of rapidly advancing and new technologies.
SEMP
A new construct emerging in the area of sightedness which tends to fall into four different categories. They can be remembered by the acronym SEMP. First Sight: (S) That which we see. It is our first “line of sight.” Second Sight: (E) Revolves around the ways experience, emotion and education shape our sight. Third Sight (M) That which is manipulated, manufactured or metaphysical. Fourth Sight: (P) The ability of non-living entities (pseudo-persons) to see and therefore perform and produce what non-carbon life forms never could before.
Simultaneous Time
The movement of time away from the linear and toward the contiguous. Quantum physics theorizes that time travels in waves and can overlap itself. In life, people are multi-tasking, pursuing more than one career at a time, and living multiple lives in virtual worlds.
Skills Strata
The unequal and hierarchical stratification of global skill sets that has led to greater overall income inequality.
Smart vs. Intelligent
Smart is the ability to learn bodies of knowledge and recall these when required. Intelligence is the ability to figure something out when you have never learned it before.
Sociosomatic Medicine
The maintenance of health and well-being using a combination of physical and social conditions that affect both mind and body.
Socialbots
Robots that collaborate with, look after, or help humans. Socialbots will become a new demographic: a population in their own right. They will take away many jobs, but their creation and care will require all manner of products and services that will create new industry segments and new consumer opportunities.
Socio-Techno Diseases
Illnesses caused by new technologies (e.g., carpal tunnel syndrome) and the coupling of technology with prosperity (e.g., asthma, ADHD).
Spectator Consumerism
Moving upstream against the tide of consumer empowerment is a profound countertrend toward the passive consumer. Driven by an evolving consumer marketplace comprised of “smart” and integrated products and technologies, consumers have, in many cases, disintermediated themselves and become sideline spectators in their own lives.
Spell-Check Me
Many more people are letting software platforms manage their lives in order to gain better control of their lives. People now “spell check” behaviors (e.g., with wearables, social media and apps) that had previously been instinctual or serendipitous – such as dating, raising children, providing feedback or staying fit.
Spirit-duality
Workplaces becoming more spiritual and more technologically-dependent, becoming more human and more automated. The integration of these seemingly disparate areas becoming more seamless. The increasing drive to get work done, be productive and achieve a holistic sense of wellness in a world of rapidly-accelerating technology.
Supranational Organizations
Organizations based on formal (and sometimes informal) cooperation among government agencies, NGOs and grassroots movements.
Supra-Urban Visions
The re-engineering, re-imagining and re-envisioning of how we live, where we live, and what we live in. These novel visions, which include urban agriculture and offshore buildings, will be necessary if we are to make cities truly livable in the future.
Symbots
A new breed of robots which represent and embody the complimentary, collaborative, cooperative, and more importantly, symbiotic relationship between humans and robots. Symbots are not just about automation, but augmentation; and not just about replacement, but enhancement.
Techno-Fashion
Wearable technologies, able to be worn close to the body, on the body or in the body. They can alter materials, entertain, sense emotions or environment, inform us of the condition of our bodies or minds, alert us to messages, give us directions, and perform an infinite number of other functions, all combined with fashionable design.
Templosion
The implosion of everything, including the biggest of events, into smaller and smaller amounts of time.
Thearchy
The fundamental struggle over governance in the Western world between rule of government by man or word of God.
The Affectional Economy
The new economic model propelled by the rapid rise of affective computing and machine-based emotional reasoning.
The Moonshot Economy
Businesses and billionaires being given the green light by leadership, regulators, the public and investors to make bets on daring initiatives that could provide enormous breakthroughs and returns. Moonshot projects signal a seismic shift from incremental innovation to an era characterized by uninhibited imagination across all industries that could affect the future for enormous numbers of people, or our planet itself.
Time Space
Endeavors that seek to compress, alter, amplify or eradicate real time in real or virtual space. We are learning more about how to manipulate time, and how to apply that to all manner of existence or enterprise. There will be an increasing focus on time as a value-added proposition. Time space encompasses templosion, the rise of image-based communication, collaborative consumption and the non-linear life trajectory.
Transhuman Infrastructure
Transhumanists see a combination of people and technology leading to the emergence of a new human species. Similarly, technology is transforming what we now know as infrastructure into something very new and, in some ways, radically different.
Trend/Countertrend
This is based on the a Newtonian concept which states: for every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction. For every trend, a countertrend exists as well. Countertrends do not happen despite trends; they happen because of them. In order to see change for what it really is, you must be able to see the paradoxes and contradictions as well.
Type A organization
Advanced/anticipatory organizations that begin with a vision — a new idea about how to position and present themselves.
Type B Organization
Brains/brawn organizations, with resources and staying power, that can bring their assets to bear effectively under different circumstances.
Type C Organization
Copycats that can do no better than follow the lead of others and hope to survive.
Unauthorized Authority
In all parts of the world, regarding all manner of activity, the current transformation is challenging and/or toppling authority. Existing authority structures are breaking down, and much of what is done now is, in many ways, unauthorized.
Universal States of America
High rates of immigration, intermarriage and religious diversity are changing the U.S. from a multicultural mix to a global blend, made up of all cultures in the world.
Vertual
A combination of vertical and virtual. Cities of the near future may consist of thousands, if not millions, of hyper-efficient micro-communities which define how people live and how they get work done.
VirFlex
Virtual geographies combined with flexible times. This refers to the evolving nature of the workplace.
Virtual Reality (VR)
Tricking the brain into believing it is somewhere else, doing something else, in real time.
Walled ‘Castles’
The concept of ‘walled gardens’ extrapolated out into the context of a smart, connected home. The old saying is that someone’s home is their castle, and with platform dynamics at play, the future Internet-of-Things may consist of a huge network of distinct “walled castles.”
Wargaming
The increasing gamification of war, and real warfare increasingly resembling videogames.
Workreation
As jobs disappear because of disruptive technologies and business models, we may be facing a future where work consists of more creative endeavors, and where creation itself – rather than material compensation — is what propels us to work
Workplace SCIENCE
The construction of the built environment is increasingly being turned into more of an exact and calculable science. The seven distinct areas of “SCIENCE” (Serendipity, Cultural Fit, Interactivity, Empathy, Namaste (mindfulness), Collaboration, Engagement) refer to the aspects of the workplace that are being increasingly quantified, measured and leveraged.
Ymigration
The unprecedented movement of Generation Y to seek better opportunities, and pursue large chunks of their lives, overseas. Fewer ties to extended family, increasing use of English in the rest of the world, 24/7 technology, and the mobility of retirees all contribute to Gen Y’s willingness to emigrate.
Yottasphere
The scale of big data is expanding at breakneck speed, possibly leading to a mind-bending threshold. It is now at least within the realm of possibility that in the near future we enter a “yotta world” (the prefix “yotta” being equivalent to 1,000 trillion gigabytes) of digital data.