Don’t let the Future Shock You - Understand Future Shifts

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” -? Future Shock (1970), Alvin Toffler?

AI has started to dominate multiple businesses through its competency to find and produce information, it is almost like an extended, quicker and second brain to humans today. But when it comes to predicting the future, it might not be a good reliance.? AI very much depends on pattern recognition and information of the past to produce an estimated flow of events of the future. This again depends on the specificity of the prompt and the question with multiple dependencies and variables. Design Sense driven human intelligence on the other hand considers the coordinates of intuition, imagination, possibilities and creativity.??

It’s interesting how 53 years ago Toffler came so close to predicting the future and much of his literature which includes popular titles like Future Shock and Third Wave comes very close to how the world looks today.??

Toffler had the power to superforecast what we call Future Shifts. It is understanding the transitions that are happening in various spheres of life and also predicting the transitions that are bound to happen in the future. It’s extremely difficult to navigate the complexity and the rapid pace with which the technologies and cultures of future crashes into the world of businesses, with a host of trends, practices, processes and by the time you can even comprehend, you are swept away by the tide of changes around you and the next change is on the way. Understanding “future shifts” helps you to avoid this “future shock”.??

AI is a reality that’s challenging various industries. For instance, creative companies like Adobe have embraced artificial intelligence, but Nikon's "Natural Intelligence" campaign in Peru takes a different stance. It showcases stunning images of extraordinary natural landscapes captured by Nikon users. The campaign aims to emphasize the artistic and creative abilities of photographers, highlighting the uniqueness and beauty of the real world. By mimicking AI image generator prompts, Nikon reminds viewers that true beauty cannot be replicated by AI. The campaign has received positive feedback, inspiring people to appreciate and explore the real world through their cameras. It also raises important questions about copyright and the impact of AI on creative professionals.?

Nikon disrupted the future shock, through gauging a future shift and innovating itself as a resilient force against a change that challenges it’s survival.??

This month, Northern India experienced heavy showers, providing relief from a scorching heat wave. However, other areas are still expected to face high temperatures, highlighting the vulnerability of millions in the world's most populous nation to the climate crisis. The downpour in Uttar Pradesh was welcomed by the state's 220 million residents after temperatures reached 47 degrees Celsius (116 Fahrenheit) , causing heat-related illnesses. China and Pakistan have also been affected by extreme heat. Experts warn that the cascading effects of prolonged heat waves will be devastating, impacting agriculture, economy, public health, and the environment. Efforts are being made to mitigate these impacts, but the challenges are significant.

Climate change startups and incubators around the world are the front line of the resistance against the threat that challenges the survival of life as we know it.??

Understanding Future Shifts is intrinsic to the following?

VUCA: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity?

BANI :? Brittle, Anxious, Non-Linear, Incomprehensible??

RUPT: Rapid, Unpredictable, Paradoxical, Tangled?

TUNA: Turbulent, Uncertain, Novel. Ambiguous?

We are living in the cross grid of these worlds and if we do not understand Future Shifts we are in for Future Shock.??

Toffler emphasizes on??

?Adaptability:? in the face of rapid change

Anticipatory Thinking: which involves being proactive than being reactive.?

Education and Lifelong Learning: constantly updating our knowledge and skills to keep up with evolving technologies and societal transformations.??

In 2023, you might not have your personal Toffler but you have us at Spread Strategy at Spread Design and Innovation, Bangalore, who based on the approach of future shifts deep dive into understanding that are bound to affect the future of your business.??

We are constantly evolving our creative tools and frameworks in order to decode the emergence happening in the landscape all around us.?

For Education Technology, we have perceived the new possibilities, conducted on-ground research to check the barriers and the pain points faced by the end-user/ students? and created experiences for acquisition, engagement and retention of the end user’s attention.??

This design experience can also reshape the future of brands which may want to create a renaissance in the present, uphold the legacy of the past and become a culture and movement for their target consumers.

Beyond experience design, the power of superforecasting can also identify the changes in sectors such as home appliances in the premium market segment of a specific demography like Southern India through a deep qualitative study of human experiences, lifestyles and choices.???

The tools we deployed to understand this included interviews, capturing needs, wishes, big dreams, moments of life, rigorous documentation, an ability to imagine and articulate the trends. These cannot be done by AI which only considers logical patterns and calculates in binaries of 0 and 1. It cannot pinpoint local, personal, psychographic and demographic understanding which shift readers can do via feet on the ground, applying design sense which is not merely a mothership of information integration or facilitating conversions but a complete end to end understanding of changes that surround and impact the product market fits.?

When it comes to generating images, applications like Leonardo or even Midjourney will only show you abstracts and pattern recognition based generic images that might not even fit your search criteria or what you have in mind.?

Your business could be small and successful / medium and meaningful / big and beautiful, bold and powerful - but you would still need to anticipate change. Small businesses like to scale themselves, medium businesses want to stay meaningful always, big businesses don’t want to become ugly. All of them need to predict change.?

All the shifts that we witness in our environments creates the basis and foundation for creating brand identity.?

The next generation and in this case if we consider Gen Z and Gen Alpha, looks at the future from the perspective of a J Curve implying exponential growth accelerated by AI, quantum computing, geopolitics, biohacking and much more.?

Home appliances of the future will cater to the big dreams of future consumers. EdTech of the future will prioritize user delight. The apparel and shoe industry will become more and more hyper personalized.??

Some of the shifts we gauged helped us intuitively understand what the future holds and it’s not a critical academic citation based exercise because rarely algorithmic results are bias free. Prompt chatGPT on any historical figure and you will understand that it will be very diplomatic and present to you a good and fair image of all the first world leaders and the West. Our tools are hyperlocal, consider the global trend and can navigate your environment with accuracy.?

This is where we need Future Shifts. Let’s not get shocked.??

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Nikon-takes-aim-at-AI-images-with-Natural-Intelligence-campaign.726350.0.html?

https://cybernews.com/tech/nikon-pushes-back-against-ai/????

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/26/india/india-heatwave-extreme-weather-rain-intl-hnk/index.html????