There has been some discussion whether technologic integration is an urban myth or reality.
Usually consumers are always expecting integration. Will facebook integrate with google? Mobile with computers? Wikipedia with Forums?
On the other hand, innovation brings us new disrupting concepts constantly that are not integrated with existing technology.
My previous post, explains the difference between patterns and trends, and this should help us better understand this dilemma of integration.
If we look at integration as a trend, we really can’t get nowhere. Are technologies more integrated today than they were five years ago? I can’t answer this question correctly and I doubt that anyone can. The problem is that we don’t have a way to measure integration.
Instead, if we look at patterns, the answer becomes much more clearly. Whenever there are new disruptive concepts or technology they are usually disintegrated from the existing ones. It makes only sense, that the settled players are not negotiating with the new arising players.
But once that new technologies or players are settled and they find their space close to the consumer, then all the others want to integrate.
So there is a clear pattern. When something new appears it’s disintegrated, and over time it tends to integrate. This doesn’t answer if the future will present us with more integration or disintegration, but it tells us that what today is disintegrated will be integrated in the future.
So if innovation keeps growing there will be more disintegration, but if innovation slows down, than integration will occur.
domingo, 11 de julho de 2010
Patterns Vs Trends
Usually Futurists don’t concern enough about the difference between trends and patterns, talking about both as if they were the same. But they era actually different and we should take those differences in consideration, in order to form better methods which are the basis for our work and investigations.
A trend is a change with a direction that is generally kept in a certain period of time. That period could be longer or shorter, and sometimes it can be interrupted to be continued later, but this is the mais idea. Increasing or decreasing trough time.
A patter is a repetition based on a condition, and is usually stated as “When A occurs, B occurs”. That repetition may be global and with no time limit, or it may be limited to a certain context. An example for a pattern could be “morning is the time of day with more stock market transactions” or “Monday is the day when more heart attacks occur”.
If we look at the first example we may transform the sentence so it doesn’t look like a condition, but it always maintains that relation between two events: morning and transactions.
If we look at the second condition, then it becomes clear that the country where this statement was made is a Christian country. This only happens because Monday is the first day of work, so in a country were Sunday was a working day, then Monday wouldn’t be the day with more heart attacks.
Back to the methods, the reason why is important to distinguish trends from patterns is that both of them have different methods to be detected and validated.
The best professionals to identify and validate patterns are not futurists, but historians and scientific investigators. Probably historians are better at discovering patterns, and scientists are better at validating, understanding and defining the conditions for patterns.
Trends on the other side, are usually better detected, understand and validated by futurists, or field professionals. The reason why historians and scientists are not so useful at identifying and studying patterns is that they are mostly focus on the past being limited to identify and study emergent change.
On an horizon scanning, both elements should be considered. Usually futurists tend to focus on trends, asking “what change is happening”, but we must never neglect patterns that comes in “How does change happens”, or “Why does change happens”.
When we use the Iceberg analysis, we usually justify smaller trends with bigger trends, but on a macro scale trends can not be totally justified by other trends. That would be the same as saying that “change happens because change happens”, which doesn’t justify how go from inaction to action. Only pattern analysis can justify the first existence of change. For a very simple example let’s consider that we have a lion and a zebra in the same space. The pattern says that if a zebra in a Zebra are in the same space, the Lion will chase, and the Zebra will try to escape. From that point Change is justified, and other changes will occur over time. If the lion is faster than the distance between both will decrease, but if they run at the same speed, then over time exhaustion will increase. So patterns are at the bottom of the study and trends are at the surface of change.
The patterns and trends that we identify in scanning must be crossed during the analysis. Futurists always ask how patterns will be changed by patterns, but it’s really important to analyze how patterns interfere with existing trends.
A trend is a change with a direction that is generally kept in a certain period of time. That period could be longer or shorter, and sometimes it can be interrupted to be continued later, but this is the mais idea. Increasing or decreasing trough time.
A patter is a repetition based on a condition, and is usually stated as “When A occurs, B occurs”. That repetition may be global and with no time limit, or it may be limited to a certain context. An example for a pattern could be “morning is the time of day with more stock market transactions” or “Monday is the day when more heart attacks occur”.
If we look at the first example we may transform the sentence so it doesn’t look like a condition, but it always maintains that relation between two events: morning and transactions.
If we look at the second condition, then it becomes clear that the country where this statement was made is a Christian country. This only happens because Monday is the first day of work, so in a country were Sunday was a working day, then Monday wouldn’t be the day with more heart attacks.
Back to the methods, the reason why is important to distinguish trends from patterns is that both of them have different methods to be detected and validated.
The best professionals to identify and validate patterns are not futurists, but historians and scientific investigators. Probably historians are better at discovering patterns, and scientists are better at validating, understanding and defining the conditions for patterns.
Trends on the other side, are usually better detected, understand and validated by futurists, or field professionals. The reason why historians and scientists are not so useful at identifying and studying patterns is that they are mostly focus on the past being limited to identify and study emergent change.
On an horizon scanning, both elements should be considered. Usually futurists tend to focus on trends, asking “what change is happening”, but we must never neglect patterns that comes in “How does change happens”, or “Why does change happens”.
When we use the Iceberg analysis, we usually justify smaller trends with bigger trends, but on a macro scale trends can not be totally justified by other trends. That would be the same as saying that “change happens because change happens”, which doesn’t justify how go from inaction to action. Only pattern analysis can justify the first existence of change. For a very simple example let’s consider that we have a lion and a zebra in the same space. The pattern says that if a zebra in a Zebra are in the same space, the Lion will chase, and the Zebra will try to escape. From that point Change is justified, and other changes will occur over time. If the lion is faster than the distance between both will decrease, but if they run at the same speed, then over time exhaustion will increase. So patterns are at the bottom of the study and trends are at the surface of change.
The patterns and trends that we identify in scanning must be crossed during the analysis. Futurists always ask how patterns will be changed by patterns, but it’s really important to analyze how patterns interfere with existing trends.
segunda-feira, 5 de julho de 2010
Will Facebook last Forever ?
Last night the news about young people abandoning Facebook dropped as a bomb. The article was based in a study of interviews made to teenagers, where they presented a lot of arguments to quitting facebook and social networks in general.
First, I must say that the way we use the expression “social networks” for everything really bothers me. Suddenly everything on the internet is a social network, even the internet itself. Supposedly a social network is something were individuals publicly add each other simultaneously as friends.
Linkedin is the pure social network, which serves the purpose of social networking exclusively. And most people do not spend hours a week in a social network, unless they are something like a head-hunter or a sales person. Most of us are just part of a social network so someone else will find us, or maybe in a certain situation it may be useful to track someone else.
So it is not fair to say that Social Networking is dying, it’s just there when we need it. There is no need to go there every day.
Now, Facebook is much more than a Social Network. It has micro-blogging, picture and video sharing, groups, fan club, and a lot of applications like Quizzes or games.
The great platform for micro-blogging is Twitter, which does nothing else than that one purpose that is micro-blogging. Now, kids and teenager don’t like micro-blogging. It’s usually skilled professionals who use it to share and learn from their professional community. For example, Foresighters use it all the time for trend-hunting. One particular difference between micro-blogging and social networks, is that in micro-blogging adding is not simultaneous. Person A might be following B, without B being following A.
Micro-blogging is not dying either. Sure it has passed that fashion momentum, but now it’s used by who it is supposed to be.
You might want to remember all of this, next time someone says that Google Buzz is a social network.
Now, before I get into the dying of Facebook and Social Networks let me explain the concept of layered information. All of us, at a conscient or inconscient level, assume that some information is more important than other. So, a more important information would be a top layer. It’s fair to assume that most people would have this order: personal talk, phone, email, and micro-blogging. Of course, this is not the same for everyone, as some of us would consider s.m.s. over e-mail and others the other way around.
After all of this let’s look at facebook and bring that question “Will facebook last forever?”. Considering that in internet terms, “forever” means something like a decade.
Facebook is a social network, which represents no reason to visit it often. But then it has micro-blogging in it, with the problem that you don’t choose who you follow. You just choose who is your friend. When we think about all that useless information, there really is no reason to go there, because all those posts about who likes what are at the bottom layer of all the information we receive daily.
A few months ago, Facebook Quizzes were really cool and funny, but we got tired of it really fast. That is something else that will not keep our attention, whether we are teenagers or grown-ups.
Groups and Forums is something that facebook never had great success. A lot of people sign in, or push the “I like” button, but then forgets about it. So that is not the way either.
And now, facebook has something that scares all teenagers away: their parents. In a place where all your friends talk about your personal life, and everybody comments, you don’t want your parents around. It’s not about being a teenager. Nobody likes to have their parents snooping around their personal life. No matter what age we are.
So this leaves one reason to go back to facebook often. Yes, you are right. That reason is Farmville, or mafia wars, or whatever networking-game you are playing.
The problem with networking-games is that they are only fun for a certain amount of time, even when you are addicted to games. This is why we have so many games with a name ending in vile or city. They all want to be the next big game, but always very similar to the ones already existing.
So, if facebook, doesn’t want to perish into oblivience, it has to find something else that Is appealing and great. To survive, facebook will have to find the next big thing in order to call the teenagers back in.
Or maybe Facebook will be the new grown-ups platform, which is the most probably scenario. In the internet world, teenagers are the early adopters, and grown-ups follow them. And big corporations will be there announcing their products and services, and a lot of professionals will try to organize lobbying events, and debate their activities. And we will have a lot of people over 30 playing Farmville.
Oops. That is not the future… It’s now
First, I must say that the way we use the expression “social networks” for everything really bothers me. Suddenly everything on the internet is a social network, even the internet itself. Supposedly a social network is something were individuals publicly add each other simultaneously as friends.
Linkedin is the pure social network, which serves the purpose of social networking exclusively. And most people do not spend hours a week in a social network, unless they are something like a head-hunter or a sales person. Most of us are just part of a social network so someone else will find us, or maybe in a certain situation it may be useful to track someone else.
So it is not fair to say that Social Networking is dying, it’s just there when we need it. There is no need to go there every day.
Now, Facebook is much more than a Social Network. It has micro-blogging, picture and video sharing, groups, fan club, and a lot of applications like Quizzes or games.
The great platform for micro-blogging is Twitter, which does nothing else than that one purpose that is micro-blogging. Now, kids and teenager don’t like micro-blogging. It’s usually skilled professionals who use it to share and learn from their professional community. For example, Foresighters use it all the time for trend-hunting. One particular difference between micro-blogging and social networks, is that in micro-blogging adding is not simultaneous. Person A might be following B, without B being following A.
Micro-blogging is not dying either. Sure it has passed that fashion momentum, but now it’s used by who it is supposed to be.
You might want to remember all of this, next time someone says that Google Buzz is a social network.
Now, before I get into the dying of Facebook and Social Networks let me explain the concept of layered information. All of us, at a conscient or inconscient level, assume that some information is more important than other. So, a more important information would be a top layer. It’s fair to assume that most people would have this order: personal talk, phone, email, and micro-blogging. Of course, this is not the same for everyone, as some of us would consider s.m.s. over e-mail and others the other way around.
After all of this let’s look at facebook and bring that question “Will facebook last forever?”. Considering that in internet terms, “forever” means something like a decade.
Facebook is a social network, which represents no reason to visit it often. But then it has micro-blogging in it, with the problem that you don’t choose who you follow. You just choose who is your friend. When we think about all that useless information, there really is no reason to go there, because all those posts about who likes what are at the bottom layer of all the information we receive daily.
A few months ago, Facebook Quizzes were really cool and funny, but we got tired of it really fast. That is something else that will not keep our attention, whether we are teenagers or grown-ups.
Groups and Forums is something that facebook never had great success. A lot of people sign in, or push the “I like” button, but then forgets about it. So that is not the way either.
And now, facebook has something that scares all teenagers away: their parents. In a place where all your friends talk about your personal life, and everybody comments, you don’t want your parents around. It’s not about being a teenager. Nobody likes to have their parents snooping around their personal life. No matter what age we are.
So this leaves one reason to go back to facebook often. Yes, you are right. That reason is Farmville, or mafia wars, or whatever networking-game you are playing.
The problem with networking-games is that they are only fun for a certain amount of time, even when you are addicted to games. This is why we have so many games with a name ending in vile or city. They all want to be the next big game, but always very similar to the ones already existing.
So, if facebook, doesn’t want to perish into oblivience, it has to find something else that Is appealing and great. To survive, facebook will have to find the next big thing in order to call the teenagers back in.
Or maybe Facebook will be the new grown-ups platform, which is the most probably scenario. In the internet world, teenagers are the early adopters, and grown-ups follow them. And big corporations will be there announcing their products and services, and a lot of professionals will try to organize lobbying events, and debate their activities. And we will have a lot of people over 30 playing Farmville.
Oops. That is not the future… It’s now
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