As I twittered a few days back, the Sydney Morning Herald recently published an article titled "Ten things that will change your future," looking at "what you need to know to survive the next decade."
The list
- The Chumby (http://www.chumby.com)
- Microblogging (http://www.pownce.com; http://www.jaiku.com; http://twitter.com)
- Everyblock (http://www.chicagocrime.org; http://www.everyblock.com)
- 23AndMe (http://www.23andme.com)
- Peer-To-Peer Lending (http://www.kiva.org)
- Mob Rules (http://www.rheingold.com)
- Guerilla Wi-Fi (http://www.meraki.com)
- World Community Grid (http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org)
- Loopt (http://www.loopt.com)
- One Laptop Per Child (http://www.laptop.org)
Three themes run through this list:
Open
From devices like the Chumby that are designed to be hacked, to sites like Everyblock that pull information from a multitude of sources, several items on the list involve openness and collaboration.
Community
Peer-to-peer lending sites bring people together to help the working poor build their businesses. Guerilla wi-fi brings people together to provide cheap wireless internet access. One Laptop Per Child's "Give One Get One" promotion lets people receive a laptop in exchange for donating one.
Most of the items on the list involve achieving outcomes through a community.
Micro
Microblogging sites allow users to send short messages to each other. Peer-to-peer lending functions primarily through micro-loans. Everyblock works at a hyper-local level.
Many of these things involve tiny actions on a large scale.
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Will these things define the next decade? I'm not sure.
I agree with the mobile focus and I'm glad the list includes a couple of items related to reducing poverty, but I don't see anything on the list that leverages them for some other really pressing issues - environmental causes, for example.
What technological trends do you see defining the next decade?
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