What if…?

The New Economics Foundation (NEF) publishes some good ideas and often some bad ideas (or should that be unworkable rather than bad?).

However, the latest notion from the self-styled ‘think and do tank’ is very interesting.

They propose a ‘Green New Deal’ akin to Roosevelts New Deal implemented in the US during the 1930’s depression. Full details of their proposals (and who drafted them) can be found here.

There main proposals include;

• “Massive investment in renewable energy and wider environmental transformation in the UK, leading to,
• The creation of thousands of new green collar jobs
• Reining in reckless aspects of the finance sector – but making low-cost capital available to fund the UK’s green economic shift
• Building a new alliance between environmentalists, industry, agriculture, and unions to put the interests of the real economy ahead of those of footloose finance”

All interesting stuff I think, but as always how its implemented would be the challenge. Setting aside the alarmist (but possibly true) 100 months to live stuff, it’s an interesting contribution to a wider debate.

Are we going to sleepwalk into the abyss always doing things the way we have always done them or are we prepared to change?

Bloomberg news this morning had an analyst on who was talking not about recession but about depression, just like the 1930’s. So perhaps a New Deal will be required.

Back in January 08 I was asked to take part in a debate as part of the BURA annual conference.

Now I was given the unenviable task of assessing the impact of the ‘credit crunch’ on the regeneration industry.

I tried to make my presentation as upbeat as possible, but even at this stage some of the figures and numbers were pretty gloomy.

The key areas I predicted might be impacted were; commercial property, private housebuilding and its supply chain, retail and cultural led development. Now I could devote a whole blog to pointing out examples that prove my point, but equally there are bound to be some cases that prove the opposite. A point I made in my speech.

However, over the subsequent lunchbreak I was surprised by the number of ‘regeneration and property development professionals’ who said I was part of a group of gloom mongers who were talking Britain into a recession.! Likewise, the number of people who (despite their relative senior status in the industry) had not looked at some of the basic facts and were not that aware of the wider forces impacting their industry and asked me where I got them from was worrying.
For the record, I am still not convinced that the UK will go into recession but the likelihood has significantly increased. These latest figures from the ONS do nothing to change this view and the post-script to this article in The Observer spells out the gloomy scenario.
One of the most interesting things for me about this whole experience is how, if a situation is potentially bad, so many people adopt an ostrich like stance and refuse to think ahead or accept that a situation may be bad.?

Does anyone know of psychological studies that examine this phenomenon?

As I mentioned in the previous post, I had a splurge on books at the weekend. In this frenzy of spending I picked up a book called, ‘A Brief History of The Future’ by Oona Strathern. Looked interesting, so I thought why not?

Anyway, it turns out to be a very good read and an interesting history lesson in mankinds attempts at ‘futurism’. I highly recommend it.

Meanwhile, on the Cognitive Edge blog Dave is asking if anybody has a ticket for the Champions League final.!

So now i am officially a lender on Zopa. At present my money has been allocated to borrowers who are going through credit checks and stuff like that. More updates when the money has gone.

Experience to date has been pretty cool and painless. So a big thumbs up.

Splurged on books today at Waterstones in Durham. I had to go to the Passport Office in Durham anyway to renew my second borns passport. We then went into the City and I ended up buying four books in Waterstone. More on these soon.

I have been interested in Zopa for a while, but only just got round to really investigating the site. Creating a big stir in the financial press, Zopa cuts out the banks and allows people to lend and borrow from other people. Its loan rates are less than any other bank (according to them) as are their return rates.

Due to launch in the US soon, will Zopa be the start of a new revolution in banking?

It all looks really interesting to me, so in the name of research I am going to become a lender on Zopa. Watch this space for more news on how that goes.

Cognitive Edge Workshop April 2007 003

Originally uploaded by stuwhatif.

Thanks to all the participants in our social complexity workshop. The feedback I have had so far has been positive. Thought you might like to see a photograph of yourselves working very hard.

This is when you were deciding whether Star Wars was chaotic or complex and whether it was the movie or script we were talking about?!

Of course if you had just used the force like Chad Vader then you would have been okay.!

Good news. We have managed to secure the services (once again) of Steve Bealing CEO of Cognitive Edge, who will be visiting the UK to run a workshop highlighting Cognitive Edges unique approaches to social complexity, knowledge sharing and sense making.

The workshop is in Newcastle on the 4th April. It runs from 10.00 - 15.00 at Jurys Inn. £150 (ex VAT) to cover costs. For more details or to book a slot email andrewh@woodholmes.co.uk.

Places are strictly limited so first come, first served.

Yesterday I was a judge at the Big Ideas ICT Hothouse Challenge. This was hosted at Southmoor School in Sunderland. I was required to view a range of student ICT project ideas as well as deliver a 1 hour talk on futures.

So, big “Hello!” to all the participants, judges and organisers of yesterdays ICT Hothouse Challenge!

Thankyou for a great day. Hopefully you all enjoyed it as much as I did. All of the projects were excellent and well presented. Several people asked me for the links to the sites I was talking about. They are listed below for your enjoyment;

GoodPoint in made by the fine people at Gesture Studios (the people who do Tom Cruise style pointy gloves!). This website has some videos which show you the gloves in action.
Beeline TV - the aggregator site for online TV.
The current tv VCAM site is here. In case you are wondering VCAM stands for Viewer Created Ad Message.

If you are interested in RFID then start here. This is the site of the RFID Journal.

Finally for all things to do with plastic electronics or digital paper, you can start here with the Plastic Electronics convention or you can look at CENAMPS website, who are based in North Tyneside.

Hopefully, this helps everyone. Good luck.!

Happy New Year to all What If…..? readers.

To begin 2007, a look back at the 20 most innovative tech products of the year in 2006 according to PC World magazine.

Most of these innovations seem to be of the ‘already mass market’ type rather than the insane, nanotech type stuff that Stuart usually talks about, but some interesting products nonetheless. How many of them do you own/use?

Microsoft Office 2007 is number 1 apparently, but I’m not sure whether it is good enough for me to abandon GMail and Google Calendar for now.

They also list their ‘5 breakthrough technologies to look out for in 2007′:

1. Hybrid hard drives

2. Offline Ajax applications

3. Windows Vista SideShow

4. SED TVs

5. Wide scale WiMax

So, start to tick off these products/applications as you begin using them in 2007!

I can’t believe it’s been a month since the last post on What If?. Slacking off!.

Anway, quite enjoyed this article on Physorg.com which, if you have been following the posts about Second Life, makes total sense. Apparently, 43% of those surveyed felt as strongly about their online communities as they did about their real-world communties. Also, around 20% took part in off-line actions which were directly related to their online activities.

This is a US survey so if anybody knows of a similar UK or EU study then let us know.

The What If? Project is currently at the Digital Industries Conference in Liverpool. 2 Presentations and also chairing a session (although its all fairly fluid). The theme of the conference is ‘ROI Through Great Content’ and our plan is to generate the content on this site over the next two days through the delegates here.

Not sure how this will work yet, so watch this space.

More on the wierd world of Second Life. As regular readers will know, What If? has commented on Second Life a couple of times now. In the ‘real world’ everyone I have spoken to Second Life about is, at first, either confused or trys to deny that it could be possible. Not a representative sample but interesting non the less.
Anyway, according to this article Second Life is getting it’s first tabloid newspaper.Mad!

So the big news yesterday and today is The Stern Report on Climate Change. You can read the full report (all 27 Chapters) on the Treasury Website. The What If? Project is working on providing our own interpretation of the implications which we will publish soon.

In the meantime, if you have read all of the offline news medias take on Stern, have a look at William Connellys blog; Stoat. He provides an amusing critique of some of the submissions to Stern from various stakeholders.

So onto Wikis. This article on Internet.com explains how someone has predicted that 50% of US enterprises will be using wikis by 2009. The article concludes with the following statements;

Companies should avoid the temptation to be overly controlling, noted Jotspot CEO Joe Kraus.

“You want to be restrictive when it comes to keeping information inside the four walls of the company. Within the company, you want to be more liberal than not,” he told internetnews.com.

Wikis also help address another problem companies have struggled with for years, which is how to collect and retain knowledge that is in people’s heads or in unstructured documents like e-mail.

Previous so-called knowledge-management solutions have foundered because people are loathe to spend time thanklessly regurgitating their experiences into some knowledge repository for the good of the company.

Wikis, on the other hand, are a more natural way for people to explain their thought processes and get kudos along the way.

“Wikis provide a social incentive to share knowledge,” Socialtext CEO Ross Mayfield told internetnews.com. “People don’t like filling in forms, but they enjoy telling stories about their day.”

Now, these guys would say that wouldn’t they! However, there is a large amount of truth in this, as anyone with 5 seconds experience with intranets or KM projects will testify to!. Internal Comms departments that don’t get this beware!!

Footnote: A day after I posted this. Google bought Jotspot for a squllion dollars or something…..

In the past on this blog I have discussed virtual worlds and the exchange therein of ‘real’ currency. Second Life, which is one of the most prominent of these virtual worlds, has its own currency, the Linden dollar. These are the lists of jobs/businesses that people are running in the virtual world, which in many cases provide them income in the non-virtual world (the Linden dollar is exchangable for real world currency). Stuff like this really gets me thinking.

Meanwhile over on the Cognitive Edge blog an interesting debate about Value Networks, which is worth reading. Dave mentions the work of Aubrey Meyer on personal carbon rationing in his opening which is interesting. Keen readers of What If?, will know that we referenced a book by Mayer Hillman on this blog and in our Environmental Futures workshops back in April which covered this very subject.

Finally, it seems that web 2.0 might become the new front in warfare according to this article on Silicon.com.

Interesting article on todays Environment Guardian site about the State of California deciding to sue motor manufacturers. Interesting stuff. It  throws up a whole load of questions and the Guardian quite rightly compares this battle to that of those fought against tobacco etc.

I say quite rightly, because we can envisage a whole set of future scenarios which are similar to those played out in tobacco. For example, at what stage were motor firms aware that their products were having a detrimental effect.? If it can be proved it was as far back as the 1970’s then does the compensation get backdated?

Likewise, given that most transport scientists would accept that building more roads ultimately leads to more car journeys, how culpable in all of this are the planners, politicians and governments who built the roads?

Finally, as car users (and most people are) how culpable are we? If you buy a large 4×4 to drive your kids to school in 2006, are you not more aware of the potential damage you mat be causing?

Cases like this open up a huge number of What If? Questions.

From a personal point of view I traded down to a smaller car (both in engine size and body size) last year. Most days I use the Metro to get to work, and some days I use a combination. I feel as if I am doing my bit but I have never tried to calculate my CO2 footprint yet. (perhaps Nick will do it for me!). Anecdotally, I sense that more people are using public transport but having said that, Newcastle Central Motorway is always packed from 3.00pm onwards.

All this probably means some sharp corrections are coming.!

Despite various security and privacy concerns, American Citizens will soon be getting RFID passports  according to this article on CNET news.  How long before we get them in the UK?

Also in todays news, the first terabyte hard disk appears on the horizon. Thats 1,000 GB of storage! Without wanting to sound really old I remember when the 64k ZX Spectrum was considered state of the art.

How I remember those endless hours of typing in line after line of BASIC code in the mistaken belief that when I had finished my ZX would run a fully functioning version of Asteriods.!!!

What usually happened was when I pressed RUN then the programme would need fifty hours of debugging and I would get bored, put my shoes on and go and play football.