Future Scan

Emerging Issues Scanning Taxonomy

Proof of Concept of a simplified model for the emerging issues curve, as well as a possible way for envionmental scanning to be extended into fringe ideas. Includes an online database of sorted scanning hits.

Methodolgical Musings
New Website Section

Open Source Environmental Scanning

Visual Displays of Information

Forecasting and Alternative Futures

Notes on 4 Archetypes and Wildcards

Software Tools for Scenario Development

Protecting Innovation with Idea Citation
New Website Essay
The academic citation system helps to maximize the number of ideas that get distributed through academic channels, because there is a high likelihood that the author will get due credit for the idea in the academic community. Extending this solution to society as a whole would probably prove to be quite difficult. In the world of business the payoff for lying and cheating seem much higher: it's possible to profit greatly a patentable idea, or use the uncredited ideas of others as a means for job advancement. The risk of exposure is minimal, and the payoff can be considerable.

Textual Poaching and Media Fandom
New Website Essay
On the other hand, cracking down on these expressions of fandom seem incredibly shortsighted. With one stroke the corporate media barons manage to alienate their most devoted fans and silence an ongoing source of free publicity for a corporate product. These sites have fans spending impressive quantities of time creating content that generates considerable attention for the media franchise. This conflict seems to be a front line in the battle between the conventional economy and the attention economy.

Kinder, Gentler New Economy
NY Times
The article argues that the casino get-rich-quick mentality of modern capitalism has peaked, and presents some of the signs of the change. On example is the recent publication of The Monk and the Riddle: The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur. This book was written by Randy Komisar, a longtime player in Silicon Valley. The other example is the Cluetrain Manifesto that is getting oodles of good press. More socially oriented values are getting added into the mix in talk about the New Economy. When the tech stock bubble deflates, we'll be sure to hear more of it.

Pity the RIAA
Wired News
First there was Napster, a program designed to facilitate the widespread dissemination of bootleg MP3's, now IRC is beginning to get attention as a conduit for pirated music. It seems that no matter where the RIAA (Recording Industry Association) turns, there is a new way for users of the internet to violate the copyright on digital recordings. The entire music industry may have to live with free online musical content - a development that would no doubt affect an industry designed around the manufacture, distribution and sale of music in a physical medium. The RIAA may be the canary in the coalmine in terms of dealing with having their product shift from atoms to bits, a development that doesn't bode well for other industries that wish to charge for digital content.

Tortocracy Expanding to the UK
Sunday Times UK
According to the author, the constutional reforms in the UK that are being pushed by Tony Blair and the Labor government are paving the way for an increased role for lawsuits as a governance and regulatory mechanism. Tortocracy - the the creation of public policy through litigation and settlement outside of the legislative process, is well entrenched in the us, and seems poised to jump the atlantic. It would seem that Tortocracy and common-law legal systems seem to be a good fit, whether or not Tortocracy can survive the jump to a Napoleonic legal system has to be determined.

Meta-Materials
UCSD Press Release
Even though it is composed of only copper wires and copper rings, the arrangement has an effective magnetic response to microwaves that has never been demonstrated before," said Schultz. The idea for the new composite came from Smith, building on the work of John Pendry of Imperial College, London. In 1996, Pendry described a way of using ordinary copper wires to create a material with the property physicists call "negative electric permittivity." Electric permittivity-often referred to as the "dielectric constant"-is the response of a material to electromagnetic radiation. "When you take a material like plastic, glass or sapphire and you shine microwaves onto it, you can characterize how the microwaves going through it will behave by a parameter called electric permittivity," explained Schultz. Most known materials in nature have a positive electric permittivity. Just about all of the magnetic materials in nature, those that respond to magnetic rather than electric fields, have what physicists call a "positive magnetic permeability." What's unusual about the new class of materials produced by the UCSD team is that it simultaneously has a negative electric permittivity and a negative magnetic permeability, a combination of properties never before seen in a natural or man-made material.
Sounds like the basis of 21st century stealth technology.

Tracking Online Consumers
NY Post
The Return Exchange is a central online database for retailers that allows them to track and aggregate consumer return of merchandise. While this would help to combat the bad apples that exploit generous return policies, it raises the standard e-privacy concerns. It's another examples of self-organized policing of the marketplace by business by using coordinated data collection techniques. These new technique of "digital redlining" will eventually provoke some sort of policy response. While there are some efficiency gains to be made from this form of discrimination, the absence of notification and appeal beg for a legislative remedy. Watch for it in the "Fair Online Consumer Reporting Act" of 2003.

IP Laws Stifle Pop Culture
Reason Magazine
Article detailing recent examples of how corporate interests are using copyright law to suppress grassroots fan appreciation. The fan phenomenon of "textual poaching" has become even more widespread thanks to the internet, with fan fiction and fan movies now proliferating madly on the internet. Fans are taking characters from corporate media entertainment and using them for personal self-expression. The attention economy is clashing with the digital economy - causing a new conflict between grass-roots promotion and copyright protection.

You've Got Stuff!
Forbes Magazine
7-11 is trying to position itself as a player in E-commerce - with kiosks for product ordering, as well as offering services for the pickup of online merchandize. This development should help close the "digital divide", but the most important thing is that it seemingly keeps the convenience store relevant for another generation. Shipping e-commerce goods to 7-11's for pickup are a great idea...and if they could offer decent on-site refridgeration, it could make e-groceries a more workable concept. My only question is...how big will a Big Gulp be in 20 years?

Perils of Open Access
Editor and Publisher Magazine
The LA Times seems to be the first online newspaper to remove their discussion forums from their site. The article indicates that other papers are poised to follow as well. The reason is that open access to the discussion forums has lead to the posting of material that violated forum standards. It's an example of the perennial debate between open access and moderation - and this specific article would tend to support arguments for moderation. Markets might be Conversations... but Good Fences make Good Neighbors.

Nanotechnology Naysayer
Geniebusters.org
author Lyle Burkehead takes on Eric Drexlers enthusiastic predictions about the rise of nanotechnology and the universal assembler. Burkehead puts nanotechnology within an economic context, seemingly pulling the rug out from under Drexler. If you are skeptical about Nanotech, but don't know why, this lengthy piece will give you the intellectual ammunition to hold your ground.

Taxing E-Commerce in Europe
Feed Magazine
The european VAT is having unforseen consequences on European e-commerce: It is highlighting the differences between high-tax and low-tax countries. The european VAT is calculated by the seller - but when european consumers shop around online, they are beginning to pick and choose sellers based on relative VAT level. The solution is for the VAT to be calculated by the consumer - with the same local rate being applied to purchases from different countries. The only problem is, the internet doesn't (yet) allow for this kind of geographic selection. Equitable tax arrangements for e-commerce seem like yet another force pushing us towards a geographical sorting system on the web.

Compensating Victims of Climate-Related Disasters
BBC News Online
The World Wide Fund for Nature is calling ofn industrialized nations to pay compensation to the victims of climate-related disasters (like the recent flooding in Mozambique). While the apportionment of blame for such a scheme would give an insurance adjuster a migrain headache, the idea may gain in popularity as a means to combat global warming.

Taxing E-Commerce
American Outlook
Obviously, the revenue to be gotten from Internet sales taxes is much smaller than most politicians think. In fact, the costs of collection and lost sales will probably make them a net loser, especially if the mail-order business gets dragged in and driven offshore. Sure, the Internet is new, but politicians’ penchant for uncollectable and counterproductive taxes is as old as government itself. Expect the new technology to win this one. State and Federal governments seems to be between a rock and a hard place on this one - tax, and drive the businesses offshore, or don't tax and lose the revenue. A longer term shift towards local property and and land taxes seems like a logical response by government bodies.

New Economy Heresy
Salon.com
Review of The Social Life of Information a new book written by authors John Seely Brown, Xerox's chief scientist and director of the company's legendary research facility Xerox PARC, and Paul Duguid, a historian and social theorist at the University of California at Berkeley. The authors set out to deflate the "internet changes everything" hype that is so prevalent today. Certainly worth a look. But I still feel the net will change everything, but just not today.

10 Essays on the New Economy
Business 2.0
A nice collection of what Business 2.0 describes as the 10 driving principles of the new economy. Not much new here, but the aggregation of New Economy info makes it worth a look.

Conversational Marketing
IPS Millennium Fund Website
IPS has a great risk disclosure statement that is written in a witty conversational style and is free of obfuscatory legalese. It's notable both for its readability and high informational content. In a world with dozens of websites offering practically identical products, why should users have to sit and read boring overprocessed marketing rhetoric? The boys down at the Cluetrain Manifesto seem to be on the right track about the future of conversational marketing.

The Noetic Convergence
New web site essay.
Pattern and rule based thinking is essentially a *reproductive* mode of thought - the application of an existing mental model to generate a specific outcome - whether it be a diagnosis, analysis, or even flowery rhetoric. Increasingly, expert systems may supplant human skill when it comes to tasks that require reproductive mental labor, but this doesn't necessarily imply that the cliché future vision of our machines doing all the work will come to pass. Instead, the value-added for human intellectual workers will come from *productive* modes of thought - the creation of new ideas, new approaches, and new patterns.

Immersive Advertising Environments
Salon.com
Article with discussion of selling entire train stations as advertizing environments. Fairly reasonable rates too - $150K for an entire month in the station. The immersive environment seems like an excellent way to cut though the noise of advertising, and it seems like a trend that is likely to grow.

Hoarding Ideas
Prospect Magazine UK
Ideas can circulate freely in the new economy, giving people and incentive to hoard their ideas when they don't feel they will get proper credit. The author worries about the trend towards patenting ideas as yet another roadblock for the free exchange of ideas. The citiation system of moden scholarship is one solution to insuring that innovators recieve proper credit. This credit management technique may come into much wider use as exchanges of attention become a more prominent feature of interaction.

Biometric Discrimination
Salon.com
Dutch nightclubs are currently using smartcards with biometric information to keep rowdy patrons out of their nightclubs. Next they want to expand the system to create a common database for local clubs. Who needs the state to enforce the laws, when these sorts of private rule enforcement system do a more effective job? Is this the future of discrimination? With private companies networking together to ban the unwanted? As this technology becomes more widely applied , we can expect to see public demand for greater regulation over who has access to these databases, and the establishment of protections to protect the civil rights of the excluded.

UK activists want 5 year freeze on Genengineered Foods
Environmental News Service reports on the UK grassroots movement to impose a 5 year moratorium on the sale and development of Genengineered food in the UK. Aside from the main policy debate, there is an interesting side debate over whether national or global (OECD) institutions should properly impose such regulation. Another point of interest is that the "X-year freeze" seems to be gaining in popularity as a legislative strategy. US e-commerce has enjoyed a tax moratorium for the past several years. Rather than enact an outright ban, activists can promote the idea of a "sensible" freeze that allows time for "proper study", and then wait a few years for a new set of entrenched interests to help turn a temporary freeze into a permanent policy.

Evolutionary Psychology growing in influence
The Observer reports that the neo-darwininian model for human behavior is beginning to move out of academia and into the mainstream. Already its proponents are taking on the Rape=Violence argument, and a new slew of books is poised to bring these ideas to a much wider audience. If combined with research into the genetic determinants of human behavior, this field could emerge as an important intellectual paradigm for thinking about a wide variety of human behavior.

When Wives Earn More Than Their Husbands
International Herald Tribune: In a striking rewriting of the age-old compact between husbands and wives, the proportion of American couples in which the woman is chief breadwinner has been increasing so markedly that nearly one in three working wives nationwide now is paid more than her husband, compared with fewer than one in five in 1980. Interesting statistical evidence for Susan Faludi's idea that masculinity is becoming increasingly ornamental in the 21st century.

Keeping Startups in School
Wired News reports on an emerging issue for higher education - finding ways to keep student entrepreneurs enrolled in school. The speed of the new economy is placing a premium on youth and energy as key ingredients for new enterprises. Schools are going to have to cope with the commercial interests of their students, or face being perceived as a roadblock to success by the brightest and most motivated students.

Global Warming: The Contrarian View NY Times article on the scientific debates over global warming data analysis. Global warming is poised to become a major international political issue in the 21st century, yet the scientific foundation for policies like the Kyoto accords is still in dispute.

McCain's Bull Moose Potential Mother Jones magazine article speculating on the possibility that McCain could run under the banner of the Reform party if he loses the Republican nomination. The article addresses an interesting set of paralells to TR and Taft, as well as some polling data on public support for 3rd party candidates.

The Hyper-Linked Organization David Weinberger has a concise piece in Upside Today discussing the impact of internet communication technologies on hierarchical corporate structures. New Economy companies are seemingly replicating many traditional corporate structures - will they be able to prosper in the long run in the new Hyper-Linked environment?

Partioning CyberspaceICraveTV is developing a technology that will enable web users to be identified by geographic region. While cyberspace has traditonally been a continuous zone of free access, this development may pave the way for soveriegn political units to begin to excercise control over web access. It's a bit of supporting evidence for Lawrence Lessig's argument that technological architectures are a mode of regulation.

The Attention Economy
New website essay.

DNA testing for misdemeanor crimes
This Boston Globe article reports that the NY Governor wants to extend the DNA testing of convicted criminals to misdemeanor crimes. This would seem to be just another step down the slippery slope towards a "Gattaca" type scenario. Whether the indidvidual or the state is the eventual owner of DNA information is still undetermined, but if the public does not put up a fight, we can expect to see the DMV, public schools, and even OB/GYN wards collecting DNA sequences for the state.

The New Conservative Ideology
Domestically, the new entrant looks rather more fondly on government than conservatism is accustomed to doing. "Big government" may still be a no-no, but Mr. Kristol rejects "the notion that the highest end of government is to leave us alone." On the contrary, "limited" government may still be activist and "energetic," in the service of a "positive governing philosophy." It isn't altogether clear what this muscular government will do, but - unlike Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey and Tom DeLay - it will assuredly not merely "cut, devolve and dismantle." Abroad, the American government of Mr. Kristol's dreams will offer the world moral leadership, backed up by whatever firepower it takes. As a "champion of democracy and decency," it will act wherever these ideals are challenged.

Internet Chat to be Logged permanently?
Salon.com discusses a new effort by eNow.com to make current chatroom conversations keyword searchable and probably create an archive of chat logs. While this it will make it easier for affinity groups to find each other, existing online communities may find themselves swamped with trollers and outsiders. Many online discussions are semi-private because of their obscurity, but now that they are becoming searchable they may have to hide behind password protection to avoid harassment. With Deja. com archiving usenet, Google caching webpages, and now eNow.com archiving chat, the Internet is becoming a much more permanent medium of information exchange.

Smut Leads the Way: Cross-linking for E-Commerce Love it, or pretend you don't love it, but the porn industry is on the cutting edge of internet development. Who else has been able to pull off streaming video and a paid content business model? Upside.com brings us what they are up to now. If the porn industry is still on the leading edge of internet development, then cross-linking between competing websites will be the next big thing for e-commerce.

Pay-Per-Spam
Declan McCullagh reports that pay-per-spam schemes are beginning to gain some momentum. With human attention the scarce resource in the New Economy, these sorts of attention-conserving schemes should become more prevalent. The pay-per-spam e-mail model would also be a salvation for the direct marketing people, especially if they could tie their geographical marketing data into an e-mail addressing scheme like the one proposed by the USPS.

The Packetized World
The use of containers has brought about a physical trade network that dwarfs the internet. But there are unexpected parallels between the two entities, writes Paul Fisher.Turning content (either physical goods or digital bits) into routable packets is proving to be the dominant metaphor for modern transportation. The airline hub-and-spoke system can even be seen as crude packet transfer system for human cargo (or at least that's how it feels for passengers much of the time). What gets packetized next?

Renewable Hydrogen Fuel from Algae
A metabolic switch that triggers algae to turn sunlight into large quantities of hydrogen gas, a valuable fuel, is the subject of a new discovery reported for the first time by University of California, Berkeley, scientists and their Colorado colleagues. The news appears in this month's issue of the journal "Plant Physiology." This press release from UC Berkeley gives the scoop on this new possibility of a renewable source for hydrogen fuel. Now the only problem seems to be an efficient means of storage for a highly combustable fuel that evaporates at room temperature.

Always on Workforce
Feed.com reports on a recent UConn/Rutgers study intriguing implications for the "Productivity Paradox" of investment in IT technologies. According to this argument the real productivity gain isn't computers in the workplace - it's because of all the unpaid work that gets done at home. This could imply that the end of the IT boom is in sight, since there is a limited number of hours in the day for more unpaid work. Sounds like it's time to ask the boss for a raise while the going is good.

McCrooked?
The American Spectator has a piece speculating that John McCain may have exceeded the spending cap for his campaign in South Carolina. If true, then I'm sure McCain will explain that this is just more evidence that we need comprehensive campaign finance reform. Bush/Gore might make this an issue later in the year if the story actually pans out. McCain has a bunch of DC Lobbyists doing his fundraising, which makes one wonder why they are working to elect a man that will put them out of business? Is it because McCain's version of campaign finance reform will get struck down by the Supreme court?Or because they already have a new set of loopholes to exploit in the new regime? Or would they rather go back to lobbying the state legislature in Podunk? I wonder...