Categories: Articles

Back To The Future

Were you expecting Nike high tops and a DeLorean?

In thinking more about current trends that will become business standards (more on that here: Four Current Trends That Will Change Marketing Forever) and in seeing many videos and photos of people with their new iPads, it started becoming very obvious that we all look like we’re on the set of Star Trek – The Next Generation. In fact, you can look back to all of the Star Trek series to see how much of that technology has come to life.

You can keep looking even further back for glimpses of where we’re currently at.

A friend reminded me of an excellent article titled, As We May Think, which was written by Vannevar Bush and published in The Atlantic back in July of 1945.

Please, please read this article.

One personal idea spark from this article is that it would not hurt to Blog (maybe once in a while) with the intention of thinking of the world as it could be, rather than our perceptions of what it presently is. In the end, Blogging about the future may well be much more interesting than covering the mundane of the day.

Just a thought.

Again, be sure to check out the article here: As We May Think by Vannevar Bush (The Atlantic – July 1945).

(hat-tip: Nancie).

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.