Issue 20: gazing into the crystal ball for 2020 and the decade ahead
It won’t have passed your attention that we have just entered a new decade, what with all the ball-gazing and associated prediction-making that inevitably comes with a date mark like this. This early 2020 edition of Sparks is full of some of the more inspiring or provocative future facing articles we’ve found to give us all a flying start into the next decade and the challenges and opportunities ahead.
Fast Company,Djahan/iStock, Uber
Is a shift from ‘me’ to ‘we’ key to the future of everything?
We live in a time where choice and convenience at a low price point, thanks to technology, has become strategically ubiquitous to the exclusion of virtually all other ideas. But we’re all increasingly becoming aware that this type of consumption may have come at a cost which might yet prove to be terrible. So as brands and organisations wrestle with the changes to how we all consume, this article by Mark Wilson pulls together a series of predictions which acknowledge we have gone too far but which offer potential to be on the right side of history as the new decade plays out.
nesta
How recognising threats can inspire a more hopeful future
Nesta have bravely tackled 10 circumstances and consequences we currently face, some of which feel quite existential in threat level, and turned them into opportunity areas for positive innovation. Some are obviously more sensible than others….for instance we might ignore the suggestion to move to silly walks to avoid gait recognition (although the point is well made), but there are plenty of others that make the threats feel more addressable and a chance for positive change. You can also check out this eco-friendly and beautiful Chinese record-breaking drone display as they lead the way in reducing use of fireworks which have traditionally accounted for many deaths and injuries across China annually
Forbes/Getty
The best of the business and technology predictions for 2020
We have seen from the previous articles that a clash is coming, which will set privacy against convenience against positive purpose. How business should respond is the subject of this article from Forbes. Steve Andriole has taken predictions from Forrester and, conveniently for us, pulled together the most compelling of them, presenting the implications for business. As Travelex have discovered, one of the these predictions came true within hours of the decade beginning…
Sarah Grillo/Axios
and finally, the future is all very well but what cool new tech is coming?
CES comes to a close today for another year and it would be remiss of us not to point you in the direction of a good precis of which gadgets and tech breakthroughs we can look forward to wasting our money on. Big TVs with ever more pixels, robots to fetch toilet paper and help us cook (hopefully handwashing has been added as a fundamental law of robotics) and flying taxis by 2023…. Yea. Right.