As I compose this edition of Foresight Friday (on Monday) I thought would post my ChatGPT experiments to my blog so that readers could easily see entire essays without making the email ridiculously long. My first request was to tell me, “What is social capital?” Social capital refers to the networks, norms, and trust that …
Category: Technology
Wikipedia, St. Pete’s Tech Giant Turns 20
Wikipedia turns 20 this Friday, January 15, 2021, on what is known as “Wikipedia Day” around the world. Launched on January 15, 2001, “To create and freely distribute a free encyclopedia in all the languages of the world.” Wikipedia now contains more than 55 million articles, written by human volunteers in hundreds of languages. With 1.7 …
Lost Forever – Hundreds of Millions of Jobs and Scores of Industries
Technological unemployment is most often recognized as technology that directly replaces the work of humans because those losses are directly observable. Drive down any toll road in the world and you almost forget that just 10 years ago most people stopped to pay a human toll collector. What about the displaced jobs that are not as directly associated? Manufacturing …
Ignoring This Trend Could Ruin Startup Incubators
For a while I have expressed concern about the future of startup business incubators that are not only in Tampa Bay but everywhere. Tampa Bay Innovation Center president Tonya Elmore noted in the Tampa Bay Times last year that every “city council member in every town wants an incubator now that startups like Facebook glamorized entrepreneurship”. The article estimates …
Apple Enters Smartwatch Category But Won’t Change Demand
With Apple’s announcements yesterday it seems the brand is taking another full step into the direction of being an average consumer electronics device company. Compared to Steve Jobs’ previous absence due to his ouster in 1985 this time they are at least remaining profitable and floating above water with the competition. For now. Apple will now be offering two …
Starbucks Takes First True Step into the Knowledge Economy
The terms “knowledge economy” and “digital age” have been thrown around by professionals, pundits, academics, and politicians in some form or another for at least 20 years. Until this week however not one of them has presented a real grasp of the nature of this new economy. Most everyone has attempted to measure and understand the knowledge economy …
What Would Walt Disney Do? Bringing Tech to Florida #WWWDD
In “Section I: Visions Lost” of my book Corporate Empathy I write about Walt Disney’s biggest most daring plan ever. A plan that was scrapped and disregarded as too risky after he died. A plan that if attempted then or today (it is still viable) would completely reshape the economic landscape of the state Florida. The …
Will Apple Learn From Yahoo? How Culture Cost Yahoo $19 Billion
This week’s unimpressive announcement by Apple about the new features to be included in iOS 8 following last month’s news that Google had overtaken Apple as the worlds most valuable brand highlights how severely damaged the company’s ability to innovate has become after the loss of Steve Jobs. Apple’s second shot at doing business without Jobs …
The Up Side of Looking Down
Today we often read, hear about, or otherwise discuss how being constantly connected by technology through our smart phones and other devices to social media and the Internet is diminishing our appreciation for “real” conversations and building “real” relationships in the physical world. We are encouraged to unplug and disconnect as we fight very real …
Neoteny. Exploring the “Youthification” of Our Society
Last week Gary Vaynerchuk, author of Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook and The Thank You Economy posted an insightful article to LinkedIn about a dramatic shift that our society is experiencing right now that can be observed readily in pop culture and consumer marketing. In Youthification. It’s a Word Now, Vaynerchuk refers to the shift as “youthification” and …