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QR code containing many everyday items such as a coat hanger, microwave and shopping cart.

COVID-19 made QR codes huge, but what’s their future?

  • min read
    • If you've visited a restaurant or store recently, chances are you've seen and used the ubiquitous small squares that make up a QR code. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the small squares that make up a QR code became ubiquitous. Our exposure to these codes was never higher, nor their value clearer. But how did we get here? Why are QR codes today's technology of choice for navigating our lives? Let's step back to Japan, 1994. Where QR codes began Automotive components manufacturer Denso Wave had a frustrating problem on their supply line. They were using bar codes on their components that workers had to scan for information they needed. But bar codes became limiting for the company because of the small amount of information each could hold. The company gave one of their young engineers, Hara Masahiro, the task of developing a solution. Bar codes are one-dimensional (read along one axis,) but Masahiro's creation was two-dimensional: Read horizontally and vertically. It increased the information held from just 20 characters to 7,000. The speed these new codes introduced to manufacturing created its own problem. Technologist Simon Raik-Allen explained it to me like this: "Imagine a conveyor belt with all the products going past. You want a camera to see which products are where. If they go too fast, the camera won't read it." Since then, eagerness to adopt QR codes in business and personal lives has varied. Asia has been the keenest adopter, with QR codes playing a central role in digital payments. In China, consumers use WeChat or Alipay apps to make some 90 percent of mobile payments, and both use QR codes to facilitate the transaction. In Africa, M-Pesa has started to incorporate QR codes into its text message banking service. In Europe and North America, uptake had been less enthusiastic – until now. A 2015 TechCrunch article called QR codes "frustrating" and a "laughing stock." Brands eager to plaster QR codes wherever they could and the likes of QR code tattoos led to perception the codes were a gimmick. The user needing to download a QR code scanning app may have contributed to this sense of needless novelty. In 2017 things changed. Phone manufacturers began incorporating QR code scanners into camera apps so users didn't need to download an app. Improvements in mobile technology letting scanned links open more quickly also played a part, according to Joe Waters, author of QR Codes for Dummies. These improvements planted the seed that allowed the technology's quick adoption in the pandemic when the need became clear. Waters says, "People now want as little contact as possible with everyday objects that may spread germs." This poses a novel question: Will our newfound familiarity with QR codes lead to new uses in the coming months and years? How should business and tech leaders be thinking about QR codes? The Future of QR codes Large retailers like Amazon have started experimenting with QR codes to track and for payment in their physical stores. But opportunities are opening for retailers of all sizes, especially around demonstrating sustainability and environmental credentials. Fashion label Another Tomorrow uses QR codes on labels to give consumers more information on the clothing item's sustainability. Provenance uses blockchain to make supply chains transparent, with QR codes for consumers to see evidence of what the brand claims. The 2021 'right to repair' EU law means consumer electronics manufacturers must add a QR code for more information on the product, like how loud it is. Securing QR code-reading for business Data security is a pressing concern with widespread adoption of QR codes. Consumers and businesses may not have known the security risks as they rapidly adopted the technology in the past 12 months. David Emm, Principal Security Researcher at Kaspersky, says "A tainted QR code might ask a user to download a malicious app containing malware. The malware could then steal personal information." Businesses can reduce their risk by using a reputable, up-to-date QR code scanner. It also pays to raise awareness among staff and customers of malicious QR codes, for example, advising they consider whether a code looks tampered with before scanning it. The battle for a new technology's acceptance is won when the audience understands what it does that no other technology can do. The pandemic gave the QR code a chance to show it was no gimmick. Business should expect to see QR codes used more widely and creatively, and consider how those game-changing 7,000 characters could help them do business better.
An astronaut, Sputnik satellite and modern satellites orbit a smartphone displaying an image of earth

IT came from outer space: How space technology conquered the world

  • min read
    • The Russians started it all. The timeline that ends with you reading this on your smartphone began on October 4, 1957. That was the day the former Soviet Union announced it had placed the first artificial satellite into orbit around our planet. Designed to look futuristic About the size and shape of a basketball and weighing little more than 84kg, Sputnik took about 98 minutes to follow its elliptical path around the Earth. A polished aluminum-alloy orb with four long antennae pointing straight out behind it, Sputnik had a futuristic dynamism not seen before in the West. Sergei Korolev, who designed both the satellite and powerful R-7 rocket that carried it into space, meant it to have that effect. He'd foreseen the satellite's technological impact and wanted to see Sputnik replicas on display in the museums of the future. He wasn't the only one who'd foreseen its impact. Back in 1947, James Lipp, head of the US's RAND (Research and Development) Corporation Missile Division, remarked: "One can imagine the consternation and admiration that would be felt here if the United States were to discover suddenly that some other nation had already put up a successful satellite." Sputnik's long-tailed impact RAND was one of the first organizations to study how space technology might shape human behavior on Earth. When it came to Sputnik, the anticipated "consternation and admiration" had unexpected long-term consequences for information technology. The satellite's launch marked a high point in the International Geophysics Year. Its organizers, the International Council of Scientific Unions, had approved a resolution calling for artificial satellites to be placed in orbit around the Earth to study its surface from above. As a simple telemetric device capable of being tracked across the sky from Earth, Sputnik marked the start of the collective mapping of our planet, revolutionizing global navigation, travel and communication. The GPS trackers in smartphones are just one of its many outcomes. Netting the unexpected consequence It's often the unintended consequence that has the most profound impact. Rattled by the Soviet Union's lead in space, the US concentrated resources on closing that gap and pulling ahead in areas where they already had an edge. President Eisenhower had just appointed a new Defense Secretary: Former Procter & Gamble Promotions Manager, Neil McElroy. McElroy's consumer goods experience brought a more integrated organizational approach. The individual initiative became subordinate to a larger, more coordinated system. McElroy's principal achievement was to revolutionize funding for scientific research by establishing the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA.) In 1969 ARPA developed the earliest model of the internet, ARPANET. This breakthrough was an unexpected outcome of the Soviet Union taking such a decisive lead in the Space Race with Sputnik. Putting connection at the center of innovation ARPA funneled resources into areas where the US was ahead of the Soviets: Developing data processing, computers and communication networks. ARPA funding meant companies like IBM, Western Electric and Bell Telephone were soon working with Massachusetts Institute of Technology's national security research and development lab, Lincoln Laboratories and the Jet Propulsion Labs at California's science and engineering institute Caltech. By the end of the 1950s, ARPA's approach to experimentation and innovation – connecting academics with business strategists, researchers with engineers, designers with manufacturers – had a counterpart in NASA, the US's newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Satellites, spies and videotape At the same time, the RAND Corporation had turned its attention to low-Earth orbit. Working with audiotape company Ampex, it developed a satellite-based video system to spy on enemies. Throughout the rest of the 20th century and well into the 21st, the impact of videotape on how television shows and films were made, distributed and seen would be enormous. This video system captured Vice President Richard Nixon confronting Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev over the USSR's missile technology in 1959. While Nixon and Khrushchev clashed in public, NASA displayed its first astronauts at a press conference. The 'Mercury Seven' fast became media personalities. "We have faith in the space age," one astronaut told the press. "All of us have faith in mechanical objects." Perhaps not quite enough faith, as it was Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin who became the first human launched into Earth's orbit. This great leap was really a series of tiny cautious steps. The physiological problems of life in space remained unsolved. Breathing like a cyborg How would humans survive outside the protection of the Earth's atmosphere? One unusual response came from scientists Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline in a magazine article published in 1960, Cyborgs and Space. They suggested: "There may be much more efficient ways of carrying out the functions of the respiratory system than by breathing, which becomes cumbersome in space. One proposed solution for the not too distant future is relatively simple: Don't breathe!" Coining the term 'cyborg,' Clynes and Kline imagined ways machines might help human biology adapt to the hostile environment of space. "If man attempts partial adaptation to space conditions, instead of insisting on carrying his whole environment along with him," they argued, "a number of new possibilities appear." The key possibility was an expanded understanding of how human physiology can interact directly with advanced engineering techniques in the form of prosthetics, exoskeletons, wearable technology, robotic limbs and implants – all now firmly established areas of scientific research and startup ventures. According to one estimate, we check our smartphones 144 times a day. The symbiosis between humans and machines underpins both space exploration and data processing. For astronauts interacting with the artificial work environment aboard the International Space Station, the ease of use of sophisticated technology can be a matter of life and death. Astronauts survive in space only because they're kept safe in a seamless technological bubble. Every aspect of life on Earth must be replicated in space, from the most extraordinary to the most banal. Space race makes powdered drink mix sexy Urban myths link NASA to many materials, fabrics and gadgets. In fact, they didn't invent Teflon, Velcro or the powdered drink mix Tang. Teflon had been around since the 1930s, Velcro since the 1950s and Tang was on the market just as NASA was finding its feet. Mercury astronaut John Glenn drinking Tang in orbit as part of an experiment did, however, do a lot for the brand. NASA may not have invented these products, but it helped to popularize them. Having your product associated with astronauts and the space race connected it with science and discovery. Sometimes the association was so close misunderstandings persist. A private company invented and developed the chrome-plated Fisher Space Pen, capable of writing upside-down and in zero gravity. Both NASA and the Soviet Union space program became their customers. Space research that became consumer products It's not as if NASA wasn't producing enough of its own tech spinoffs. In 1976, NASA started its Technology Transfer Program to ensure there could be commercial licensing for innovations resulting from space exploration. Nearly every aspect of our lives has benefitted from this approach. For example, NASA sponsored research into using algae to recycle waste in outer space, only to discover that it made an excellent nutritional supplement for developing infants. Water purification systems devised for the International Space Station have improved water safety on Earth, and NASA studies in high-altitude wind resistance have led to more aerodynamic truck design. Smartphone cameras in space NASA's experiments miniaturizing cameras for use in space led to the active pixel sensor now used in the standard smartphone camera. Today's smartphones also benefit from embedded web technology used onboard the International Space Station to conduct experiments remotely over the internet. This led to the Internet of Things (IoT): Remote wireless connectivity between devices in smart homes, smart cities and all manner of wearable technology from watches to glasses and bracelets. Mapping technology currently focused on the surface of Mars is used to create detailed geospatial views of Earth's cities. Smartphones use space technology, but they've also become space technology. CubeSats are small square satellites, a fraction of the size and weight of Sputnik, that give academic science its own space program to expand knowledge and research. Started in 1999 as a collaboration between California Polytechnic State University and Stanford Space Systems Development Laboratory, they can be used as single units or in orbiting networks. In 2013, NASA technicians launched the first CubeSats fitted with iPhones to take pictures from space and transmit the data back to Earth. Almost 60 years after Sputnik circled the planet, a smartphone took the first space selfie. The possible uses for such large-scale real-time data are astronomic – for meteorology and cartography, logging and agriculture, oil and gas, insurance and transport. We may inhabit a tiny planet in a vast expanding universe, but the space surrounding us is getting smaller and cheaper to access. Good business, as always, is where you find it. Perhaps now is the time to consider how space technology can help your company gain a competitive edge.
women who shaped computing, careers, education, history Woman uses laptop on desk alongside model space rocket. Portraits of notable women hang on her wall.

We should all know about these women who shaped cybersecurity

  • min read
    • According to Cybercrime Magazine research, women held 25 percent of cybersecurity jobs globally in 2022. Surely cyber and computing careers are for everyone. So why are many women tuning out? Today's working wisdom is that diversity benefits teams, but there's slow progress in getting more women to join technology-led careers and keeping them on board. Human computers: The first data scientists The word 'computer,' coined in 1613, was first used for humans who performed computation. Many of the best were women: Nicole-Reine Etable de la Brière Lepaute helped predict Halley's Comet's return in 1758. A century later, Maria Mitchell plotted the planet Venus's motion, earning an astronomy professorship. When the US Civil War ended in 1865, war widows needed to support themselves. Women were hired as human computers. Agnes Meyer Driscoll, known as 'Madame X,' led the decoding of Japanese ciphers and manuals for the US during both world wars. Women solved the ultimate Enigma Britain's Alan Turing is famed for cracking the Nazi's 'Enigma' code during World War II, but it wasn't the work of a lone genius. Of Bletchley Park's codebreaking team, 75 percent were women. Turing's colleague Joan Clarke worked out how to speed up decoding double-encrypted messages, but unlike many of her male colleagues, her technique wasn't named after her. Clarke's job title didn't match her expertise – there was no 'senior female cryptanalyst' role, so she was given the job title 'linguist.' Painstaking calculation devalued as 'kilo-girls' The dominance of women as human computers cloaked an inconvenient truth. Their work was on average better, and they were cheaper than male counterparts. The Harvard Computers, mockingly called "Pickering's harem," supported Edward Pickering at Harvard Observatory in the 1880s, doing work men and scholars found tedious, unpaid or at a fraction of what men earned. The term 'kilo-girl' came about in the 1940s to describe complex calculations seen as 'women's work.' We measure computing power in gigabytes or terabytes, but they measured kilo-girl hours – one kilo-girl was a thousand hours of painstaking calculations. The kilo-girls work was far from trivial: In the 1950s, Gladys West's calculations for the US Naval Weapons Laboratory led to GPS's development. Computing becomes a man's world By the 1960s, human computing had given way to machines. In the 1940s programmers were mostly women, but by the end of the 1960s women made up 30 to 50 percent. Women were still paid less and few were promoted to leadership. The perception computing is for men and boys started at home. A 1984 report showed 1 in 5 girls used a computer at home, compared with 1 in 2 boys. Female computer science graduates peaked in 1984 at 37 percent, before steadily declining. Academic Wendy Hall says by the 1990s, men led professional computing and computers "were sold as toys for boys." Ten women from computer history to know Ada Lovelace invents the first algorithm Publishing the first algorithm in 1843, Ada Lovelace is said to be the world's first computer programmer. She realized Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine could do more than calculation: Combining mathematics and analysis. Ada Lovelace Day celebrates women's achievements in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) and encourages young women to follow her path. Hedy Lamarr averts the Cuban Missile Crisis 1940s Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr co-invented a frequency-hopping method to control torpedoes remotely without the risk of signal tracking or jamming. Naval ships were using the technology by the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. It later became part of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Grace Hopper invents new ways to code Grace Hopper created the first compiler for a programming language. She programmed and wrote a comprehensive manual for an electro-mechanical computer based on Babbage and Lovelace's Analytical Engine, Harvard Mark I. She wasn't credited for this but is widely miscredited for coining the term 'bug' when a moth caused her computer to malfunction. She later developed computer programming language COBOL (common business-oriented language) and invented new symbolic ways to write code. Margaret Hamilton took us to the moon The 1969 moon landing wouldn't have happened without Margaret Hamilton, who programmed Apollo's flight software.It needed more 'human computing:' After Hamilton's programming, seamstresses hardwired the code by threading copper wire through magnetic rings. Elizabeth "Jake" Feinler organized the internet At Stanford University in 1969, Elizabeth "Jake" Feinler created the first internet directory, ARPANET, alongside mostly female staff. By the early 1970s, they'd put together the first WHOIS directory of web domain ownership. Feinler suggested categorizing domains by where the computer was, like .edu domains for educational institutions. Women who built new audiences for technology Organizing, building relationships and human factors – often thought of as female traits – are critical in computing projects' success and creating demand for new services. Joan Ball set up the first computer-aided dating service in 1964. In 1988, Stacy Horn started a community in New York, the East Coast Hang Out (ECHO,) where users could chat online. Game designer Brenda Laurel's research showed girls wanted to play more interactive character computer games. In the 1990s, her company Purple Moon developed a best-selling game series inspired by that research. In the 1970s, Joan Margaret Winters researched how software should consider human factors for IBM's SHARE project. When you see the iconic trash symbol on your Apple Mac, thank Susan Kare. She worked with Steve Jobs to design its original icons. Today's influencers for women in cybersecurity When young people see people who look like them succeed in a career, they're more likely to choose it. For women considering going into cybersecurity, there's no shortage of inspiration. Parisa Tabriz, the self-styled "Security Princess" (official title: Director of Engineering,) runs Google's security testing labs. Eva Galperin, Director of Cybersecurity at Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF,) fights for digital privacy, security and civil liberties. Eva Galperin helps women secure their devices against stalkers and spying ex-partners. Rebecca Bace's threat intrusion detection work at the US National Security Agency contributed to famous hacker Kevin Mitnick's arrest. The cybersecurity community nicknamed her 'Den Mother' for her vital mentorship and advice and posthumously inducted her into the 2019 Cyber Security Hall of Fame. Dr. Anne-Marie Imafidon MBE creates skills training and certification to encourage young women to pursue cyber careers through her company Stemettes. Jane Frankland, security entrepreneur and author of InSecurity: Why a failure to attract and retain women in cybersecurity is making us all less safe, helps the C-Suite (senior management) attract and retain women in cybersecurity. Attracting and retaining more women in IT careers In the UK in 2022, just 19 percent of IT professionals were women. But in many countries, such as those in Central Asia, women make up nearly half of the IT workforce. It's the gender-equality paradox: In countries with less gender equality, educated women seek careers with more income security, while in countries with better gender equality, women avoid careers said to discriminate against women. There are green shoots of progress. Kaspersky's Women in tech report surveyed women in four global regions. Encouragingly, 57 percent say gender equality is improving in their organization. Despite this, 44 percent think male colleagues progress faster. In the report, Dr. Ronda Zelezny-Green, Co-Founder and Director of Panoply Digital, says change is slow because "too much activity around gender equality in IT focuses on one-off gimmicks and band-aid solutions that can be spotlighted in the press, instead of focusing on female employees and actions that will make a sustained difference in their professional lives." Dr. Zelezny-Green thinks we should entice more women into the industry by creating new products and services for women. Widely-reported diversity problems with Artificial intelligence (AI) could be seen as an opportunity: "There's huge potential in telling the stories of Timnit Gebreu and Joy Buolamwini, black women leading the charge for more ethical and inclusive AI design. These stories make inroads in IT and tech roles where women are currently underrepresented." In a prosperous future, we won't need to ask "Where are the women in cyber?" They're not hiding under the desk. They're making change, but in another industry. We're on the right path, but it's a long journey ahead. With more women, we can better create products that represent users and benefit from a gender-equal computing industry.
great collaborations

Despite all the cool tools, tech collaboration is still missing something

  • min read
    • Since the pandemic began, organizations have been working hard on how they collaborate. But something's still missing, and it's to do with people. Looking at successful tech and creative collaborations of the past, common trends emerge. Any organization can use these to kickstart better collaboration within and between their teams. 1.   Make partnerships bigger than their parts Perhaps the most impactful partnership right now involves big pharmaceutical companies working together to create COVID-19 vaccines. Harvard Business Review also looked at lessons learned from thousands of Chinese companies adopting more open data architecture to help scale up medical supplies production. There are other examples too. Rival payment vendors Alipay and WeChat worked with the Shanghai government to develop a QR-code based tracking system adopted by 10 million users in just six weeks. 2.   Look for driven and imaginative leadership The Unabomber was a terrorist who bombed some 16 targets across the US from the 1970s until his capture in 1996. The recent Netflix series on the hunt for the Unabomber shows how driven and imaginative leadership allowed the FBI to organize the huge investigation that ultimately identified and caught the perpetrator. A crucial piece in the puzzle was the decision to use a little-known investigative tool at the time, forensic linguistics, to profile the killer and link a suspect to the bomber's messages through his writing. 3.   Combine people with complementary skills A remarkable feature of the collaboration of the UK's famous Bletchley Park World War II code-breaking group is they worked together without knowing what each other did. The set of computers known as Colossus flawlessly executed a complex and precise series of steps. And while the Enigma machines get much publicity, the real challenge was a more complex German High Command code called Lorenz. The innovative team was assembled by recruiting civilians through difficult crossword puzzles placed in newspapers. Another great example is the team that created the Ford Mustang, as chronicled in 2015 documentary A Faster Horse. It's all about a group of engineers and designers working together to solve a specific problem. 4.   Involve everyone in generating and executing ideas Member of surreal British comedy group Monty Python, Eric Idle, says the whole Monty Python team wrote their skits before they cast them. It meant no one would be personally invested in an idea before the group could fine-tune it. Many collaborative efforts depend on a solid process of idea creation and development. Real-time online writing and editing tools like Google Docs can facilitate these efforts when you're not working face-to-face. 5.   Use active learning and group training The US Army now recognizes soldiers must protect their digital networks and repel cyber invasions. They recently created a cyber workspace near Augusta, Georgia, called Tatooine. The name refers to the planet where Star Wars' Luke Skywalker spent time in the early movies. Initially, it will focus on drone detection, active hunting of cyber threats on Department of Defense networks and designing better training systems for cyber soldiers. They're also building great partnerships between military and civilian resources, for example, the successful Hack the Army bug bounty program. 6.   Use communication and collaboration tools effectively Many of these teams worked together before the digital age, using basic communication tools. We're now blessed with email, real-time messaging apps, video chats and more. But these blessings are also a curse if misused. I've previously written about the signs you're not using communication tools effectively. The history of collaboration has been one of fits and starts. While we keep making the same mistakes, there are signs of hope as new digital collaboration tools help us over some of the hurdles. I hope you'll find these examples an inspiration for your future collaborations.
future as business narrative

Business has long imagined strange and wonderful futures, and it’s not done yet

  • min read
    • "We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives," declared US celebrity psychic The Amazing Criswell, famous in the 1950s and 1960s for his wildly improbable predictions. In books, newspaper columns and TV appearances he informed the US that a craze for devouring human flesh would sweep the nation, the laws of gravity would cease functioning and the first humans on the Moon would be three pregnant female Soviet cosmonauts. In 1969 he also predicted television personalities would no longer be seen smoking, which doesn't seem so outrageous today. It's hard not to think about Criswell while contemplating what the future might hold after the disruptive events of 2020. Making predictions has always been risky, so why should we still do it? One reason might be because the future has become an important part of the business narrative over the past century. No matter what a company is selling, its best product is often a vision of the future. The customer's world would soon be one of ease and leisure, speed and convenience. The future gives meaning and direction to all those quarterly projections, strategy documents and planning sessions. The future is 14-lane highways and smoking robots A look back at how this message developed over the decades suggests we need it now more than ever. Take, for example, the General Motors 'Futurama' experience at 1939 New York World's Fair. 1939 General Motors Futurama ride at the New York World's Fair With the Great Depression finally over, the fair's opening pitch was 'dawn of a new day.' It was the first time the world of tomorrow had been used as the theme for an international exposition. General Motors offered its visitors a filmic 'ride' over a transport system for the year 1960. Laid out below them were fourteen-lane highways, self-driving cars and residential complexes with landing strips for private aircraft. It didn't matter that General Motors didn't make any of these things – the public flocked to Futurama, just as they packed Westinghouse's Hall of Electrical Living to marvel at Elektro, the Moto-Man: A walking, talking robot that smoked cigarettes. At the time, Westinghouse was best known for its toasters and radios, but these were now part of the promise of tomorrow. In fact, the company doubled down on this association, burying a time capsule at the fair's Flushing Meadows site, not to be unearthed until the year 6939, some five thousand years into the future. 'Cheap and reliable' can change the world One visitor to the 1939 World's Fair came away with a clear idea of where this was all heading. Vannevar Bush, head of the US Office of Scientific Research and Development during World War II, drew upon his impressions of the exposition when writing 'As we may think' in 1945. First published in The Atlantic, Bush's essay on the future of information technology would become a key text, influencing generations of engineers and designers. Recalling the typewriters and computing machines he'd seen back in 1939, Bush made an important discovery: The modern world, he declared, had "arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it." The prospect of sophisticated pieces of technology being both cheap and reliable would have far-reaching implications. They brought complex engineering into the home, connecting it directly with the world of tomorrow. Big science and big business came as part of the package. Popular Mechanics' December 1952 issue featured an article on playing safe with atomic rays alongside one on selecting your Christmas tree. The future can be both familiar and new The reliability of such devices had implications for new marketing concepts like brand management, increasing a product's perceived value with the customer's sense of reassurance. But reassurance can breed familiarity. The more a consumer takes a product for granted, the more its perceived value declines for them. The promise of tomorrow starts to wear thin. Or as future president Ronald Reagan put it in a 1950s sales pitch for General Electric, "Progress is our most important product. If you're sitting back at General Electric you're probably falling behind." The product should not appear too reliable or familiar. After all, who wants to buy a used future? "Suddenly it's 1960!" Chrysler proudly announced when marketing the '57 Plymouth as part of its 'forward look' campaign. Bringing out a new model car every year had become standard industry practice by then – marketing your latest design features as 'three years ahead of their time' was simply the next step. As chance would have it, 1960 was also the year Vance Packard's The Waste Makers was published – a book that introduced the term 'planned obsolescence.' Famous for his exposé on advertising techniques, The Hidden Persuaders, Packard argued companies were deliberately engineering products to limit their future usefulness, making it easier to replace them than repair them. Tomorrow became a malfunction waiting to happen: A point eloquently made with the opening of 1964 New York World's Fair. Built on the same Flushing Meadows site as the 1939 model, it was an update on the same message. General Motors opened another Futurama ride that "takes you into the future and makes you feel like you are there – in outer space, beneath the sea, in unbelievable places watching believable things happen." More ambitious than the 1939 version, if offered visitors a glimpse of what life would be like in the year 2024. 1964 General Motors Futurama ride New York World's Fair As the fair drew to a close, business insider Alvin Toffler published his essay 'The future as a way of life,' later expanded into the bestselling book Future Shock. Published in 1970, it argued society was psychologically incapable of responding effectively to rapid technological change. "I've always been careful never to predict anything that had not already happened," media guru Marshall McLuhan observed in a television interview that same year. "The future is not what it used to be. It is here." McLuhan spent most of the previous decade advising corporations how to survive in an age of rapid networked communications. Tomorrow gets darker In 1968 Stanley Kubrick's movie epic 2001: A Space Odyssey connected corporate America with the future by placing familiar brands in the 21st century. Those on display included IBM, Howard Johnson and Whirlpool. Some, however, had disappeared by the time 2001 came around. Pan American airlines, shown flying a shuttle service into low Earth orbit, folded in 1991. Kubrick's 2001 showed confidence about the future that had all but drained away by 1999. By then people were already asking where their jetpacks and videophones were – shouldn't the future be here by now? The paperless office of the future, first introduced in a 1975 Business week article, remained as far away as ever, despite assurances that "the use of paper in business […] should be declining by 1980." As an indication of how gloomy the business of the future had become by the mid-1980s, Apple Computers announced their Macintosh desktop in terms of a more dystopian world of tomorrow, promising viewers of their launch ad, "you'll see why 1984 won't be like "1984."" Apple Macintosh '1984' ad There was also the chance that on new year's eve 1999, every computer on the planet would cease functioning the second it recalibrated itself for the year 2000. The millennium (or Y2K) bug, as it was called, would cause planes to fall out of the sky and nuclear power plants to melt down. Thanks to engineers and programmers around the world working to ensure January 1 would indeed see the dawn of a new day, the new millennium began with few disruptions. The problem hadn't just been a technical one, however. Life in the year 2000 could never have matched its hype in advertising campaigns over the past fifty years. RCA, for example, marketed an advanced '2000' color TV "set of the future," appropriately priced at 2000 US dollars. In France there was a mania for adding the number 2000 to everything from beer to pet grooming salons to emphasize a connection with the bright promise of tomorrow. Death of the cultural and technological decade The one thing that truly stopped working from the start of the 21st century was our collective ability to map out technological and economic progress in decades. From the 1930s, this incremental ten-year unit became the steppingstone to the world of tomorrow. As each decade came into focus as the decade of the future, separating itself from what came before it, so too did the concept of associating them with a significant cultural, social or political change. To mention the 1960s, 70s or 80s was to call up a specific set of products and designs. It was what allowed Marshall McLuhan to advise business leaders that 'the future's future is the present,' a statement that could have applied to any decade in the latter half of the twentieth century. This perception became increasingly blurred once we entered the new millennium. In the twenty-first century it is no longer possible to identify progress through a decade's look, mood or direction. The only people to talk about 'the noughties' with any consistency were journalists, and even they didn't seem convinced. Upgrades as the new measure of time The old mode of reckoning didn't mesh with the new century. Cars today, for example, tend not to feature the year in which they were first rolled out as an added value. The upgrade has now become the new unit of measurement, whether it's an operating system, a platform or a device. Before the coronavirus pandemic, customers around the world had been known to queue all night outside Apple stores to buy the latest iteration of the iPhone. Apple has continued what the US car industry started in announcing a new model every year. Not surprisingly, the tech industry has also been accused of factoring new forms of planned obsolescence into their products. The contemporary term 'future-proofing' reflects a growing concern with anticipating the disadvantages brought by changes that have not yet been made. It's planned obsolescence 2.0 – the post-millennial version of Future Shock. Meanwhile, in a gesture that General Motors and Westinghouse would have appreciated back in 1939, Elon Musk fitted his own 'midnight cherry' Tesla Roadster to a Space-X rocket in 2018 and sent it on a rendezvous with Mars. It may be the first roadworthy vehicle in outer space, but it's still just a car. And that's the point about the future: It's a narrative that lets business communicate with its times. Has anyone received an Amazon delivery by drone since the idea was first announced in 2016? Narratives are useful for planning and communication, but we shouldn't let ourselves grow too comfortable with them. The future is a narrative meant to help us think more freely, not a foregone conclusion.
history of electricity

Electricity’s history has surprising lessons for innovation

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    • Innovation is sometimes in seeing what's right in front of you. "Why is electricity valuable?" asked William Gladstone, British Prime Minister from 1868 to 1874. Renowned physicist Michael Faraday replied, "One day, sir, you may tax it." He understood electricity's vast potential and how to get Gladstone's attention. Today, without electricity, most economies would falter. It powers nearly all technologies. With several landmark anniversaries for electricity in 2020, the story of electricity has a lot to tell us about potential. Electricity was never invented Electricity occurs in nature. Civilizations gradually worked out how to use it. Ancient Egyptians thought electric fish protected other fish. In the Roman Empire, people touched these fish, thinking the powerful jolt could cure gout and headache. The ancient Greeks thought amber had magnetic, magical properties after seeing that rubbing amber with cats' fur attracted feathers – the triboelectric effect, or static electricity. 200 years ago, in 1820, Danish physicist Hans Christian Ørsted noticed his compass needle deflected from magnetic north when he switched his battery on and off. His research showed electric currents produce a magnetic field. The race to illuminate the world was on. Mavericks on dangerous, high-voltage quests The Baroque era was the unlikely birthplace of electronic music. The Golden Dionysus, created in 1748 by Czech theologian Václav Prokop Diviš, used electrically-charged magnets to excite keyboard strings, creating sounds that mimicked other instruments, like the harpsichord, lute and flute. It also performed a practical joke on its player: Giving them an electric shock. In 1752, Benjamin Franklin flew a kite with a metal key attached during a lightning storm. This, and similar experiments by others, led to the lightning rod's invention and understanding of positive and negative charges. The 1870s brought the race to commercialize electricity and the war of the currents. Nikola Tesla demonstrated his invention, alternating current (AC,) by dazzling audiences with an illuminated lightbulb held in his hands – a neat trick using his body as a conductor. Thomas Edison, who developed direct current (DC,) played dirty. He dubbed AC a menace to public safety and made sure the electric chair used AC, so people would associate it with danger. Later, the rival technologies merged as AC/DC, bringing electricity safely into workplaces and homes. 19th-century engineers like Bell, Kelvin and von Siemens turned electricity from a curiosity to an everyday essential. The incandescent lightbulb let factories operate around the clock, and the electric motor accelerated the industrial revolution. Welcome to the mass communication age The electric telegraph launched the mass communication age – initially delivered via telegraph poles before underwater cables were laid transatlantic. Communication no longer relied on newspapers or snail mail. Radio's invention began mass broadcasting. In 1900, priest Roberto Landell de Moura transmitted his voice five miles across São Paulo, Brazil. In November 1920, the first commercial radio station broadcast the results of the US presidential election from KDKA in Pittsburgh. A hundred years later, the same story will go out on digital platforms, including HD radio and web streaming. Music to manifest the future Radio technology also allowed the commercialization of electronic music. Around 1920, Moscow scientist Leon Theremin was researching how to measure the density of gas using audio proximity sensors. Also a cello player, Theremin realized his work could bring about a new way to make music. The theremin seemed to symbolize the enigmatic futurism of electricity. Blessed by Soviet leader Lenin, it wooed (literally, the theremin has an ethereal, warbling sound) concert audiences throughout the world as a manifestation of Lenin's 'Soviet power through electrification.' Some of those in the amazed audiences thought it was magic. Despite its shortcomings – a strange appearance and difficulty playing traditional western melodies without keys or strings – many players worldwide still try to tame this enchanting instrument, I among them. The theremin's technologies later brought the synthesizer and drum machine. Without it, we may never have heard electronic music – from Kraftwerk to Hip Hop. In 1927, Leon Theremin used similar technologies to invent the first wireless television, but much of his pioneering inventions were shrouded in secrecy behind the iron curtain. From 1947 until today, and into the future The next evolution in electricity came faster. Mainstream computing started small, with the invention of the transistor in 1947. Integrated circuits now have several billion tiny transistors squeezed onto a small board. By 1959, Bell Labs found they could produce more compact transistors with silicon, starting the silicon or digital age. Electricity's slow move into our homes and workplaces makes me wonder, what if we'd harnessed it sooner? Could society have advanced faster? Maybe not. Nikola Tesla and Leon Theremin found some fame but little fortune in their lifetimes. They were in the right place at the wrong time. And so was Hero of Alexandria. In 10CE, he made the first steam engine and automated devices such as a coin-operated vending machine, inventing both steam power and cybernetics. But empire leaders didn't see the potential, perhaps because Ancient Greece was already powered by a cheap and plentiful source of free labor. Electrical growing pains Growing electricity consumption signals a growing economy. Between 1900 and 1930, US demand grew 12 percent each year. There's now similar growth in China and India. The electricity industry is in existential crisis: How can it help us prosper while negating the effects of climate change? In April 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic slowed industry, the UK went two months without burning coal for the first time in 230 years. Global industry is targeting zero emissions from coal. Investment in renewable energies – like wind, solar and tidal – must accelerate to ween us off polluting coal, oil and risky nuclear power. There's some way to go: Renewables are just 28 percent of global electricity generation. Fortunately, there are many tech start-ups committed to ingenious solutions to meet the challenges of finding new sources of power. New Zealand's Vortex Power Systems generates low-carbon electricity from waste heat from thermal processes. A controllable vortex, similar to a waterspout, is created from differences between temperate and water vapour. This circulates to produce wind, like a controlled tornado, which connects to a wind turbine to produce electricity. Digital technologies use a lot of energy Digital transformation has shifted interactions from the real world to the cloud, but the internet isn't 'green' – Swedish Royal Institute of Technology KTH estimates the internet made up 10 percent of global electricity use in 2019. Data centers alone use as much electricity as some mid-size developing nations. Illegitimate internet use is a new threat. Cryptojacking is illicit hacking of computers for power-intensive cryptomining and the subject of extensive Kaspersky research in 2018. Businesses can take practical steps to reduce their carbon footprint, like optimizing website pages and choosing cloud providers with better environmental credentials. Smarter workplace design can also reduce electricity use. Protecting critical infrastructure Electricity helps industry thrive and communities grow. It means better economic, health and education performance. Like gas, water, and, many now say, the internet, it must operate around the clock. But it's not a right for all: 13 percent of the world's population don't have access to electricity. It's no surprise who's missing out: The worst-off communities in Sub-Saharan Africa. When electricity fails, business and society quickly falter. It's not just developing countries hit. In 1974, the UK responded to an oil crisis with a 'three-day week.' Commercial electricity was strictly limited, with early curfews on TV broadcasts and pub openings. A political flashpoint triggered as coal miners went on strike. People speculated that to keep the lights on, the army may have to be called in to transport coal. Today, cybercrime groups linked to nation states sabotage critical infrastructure. In 2016, an attack on a Ukraine power company left 225,000 citizens in the dark. Cyber safety is as vital as physical safety for the energy industry. Electricity as a human right The evolution of electricity shows mavericks spearheaded innovation, just in time to accelerate the industrial revolution and take us into the digital age. Electricity must become a right for everyone. Nations should enshrine access for all citizens and work with energy companies to protect supply. Lives depend on it. As electricity consumers, in work and life, we must think about the products and services we buy, and how we use our devices, to protect this precious resource.
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