People are just waking up to the fact that the same cryptographic game theory and technology involved in creating and securing the digital scarcity and ownership immutability that make cryptocurrencies, NFTs (non-fungible tokens) of digital goods and services (from gifs and articles to tracks and tweets) valuable and tradable, can also be used to mint … Continue reading Very Personal Futures
Tag: futures
Why Optimism Makes People Angry
Why does optimism make people angry? If you even mention the word in mixed company, not only do you get ridiculed and treated as though you are a little simple, it actually makes people angry. At you. But why is this? As a natural pessimist (I am terrible cynic) I have a few ideas. Pessimism, … Continue reading Why Optimism Makes People Angry
Control the Narrative, Control the World
Jim Morrison once said, “whoever controls the media, controls the mind”. Today the media that moves our minds and markets is increasingly digital, and contagious. Viral memes, in particular, are emerging as a new source of both wealth and power. The rapid rise of both NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), and their values, have cemented the financial … Continue reading Control the Narrative, Control the World
Assets to Liabilities
Demographic dividend, or demographic disaster? As India is about to overtake China as the world's most populous country, it's worth considering if holding that title is still the win it once was. Not so long ago, more people meant more growth, more productivity, more progress. Hence the term: demographic dividend. If your working age population … Continue reading Assets to Liabilities
Connecting the Dissapeared
Everywhere we look, people are disappearing. Disappearing into their bedrooms, into their phones, into the metaverse and out of their real lives. As life becomes more virtualised and more artificial, as our digital lives supersede our physical existence, as our stores of value - of both worldly financial wealth and social credit - become increasingly … Continue reading Connecting the Dissapeared
Africa is (literally) the future
Africa, the continent with the youngest population in the world, is very literally the future. More specially, South Africa, with its progressive constitution that lead the world in terms of dealing with questions around gender and race relations; and it’s early warnings around the limits of the social contract and the (now global) energy crunch, … Continue reading Africa is (literally) the future
Digital Landlords
“As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.”~ Adam Smith There are countless keynote speakers, business consultants and best selling books that will tell you how technology is … Continue reading Digital Landlords
Guardians of the Past
Over the last few years, Minecraft users have been painstakingly building a 1:1 replica of Earth to preserve a record of our planet and our current civilisation in event of its destruction. (Goodness knows there are enough options - from climate change and pandemics to nuclear and bio warfare - for total world-ending destruction available … Continue reading Guardians of the Past
the 1000 Year Project
It's about time you reclaimed the future. Especially the far future, which we all seem to have forgotten about. The possibility of the far future has got lost amongst the perma-crisis that clouds geopolitics literally (or less so, depending on where in the world you live...). But here's the thing : there are no rules … Continue reading the 1000 Year Project
The fine print
Perhaps the biggest policy skeleton key of them all has to be single-payer, free-at-the-point-of-purchase (that is, paid for by strangers) national health insurance / social security. This is, let us be frank, a new experiment. The first test subjects are still alive, and the future sustainability of these nice entitlements is far from guaranteed. What … Continue reading The fine print