Human cloning - part one - who is doing human cloning

Who is doing human cloning research and why. Explanation of science behind human cloning and what it means for medical research - or does it? Do we really need human cloning to solve health problems? Reasons for and against human cloning. Video comment by Dr Patrick Dixon

Future of Malaysia Economy

Future growth in Malaysia. Most economic growth will come from small companies employing less than 20 people. Expect rapid growth in services, as manufacturing creates wealth in the general population. New markets including Singapore. Video comment by Dr Patrick Dixon

Future will be driven by emotion - take hold of your future!

Emotion is more important than technology, gadgets, gizmos or inventions. Emotion is what will drive the future because it dictates how people feel and how they live. That's why market research is unreliable when it comes to future predictions - because people don't know how they will feel in future in response - say - to a terror attack or some new techno advance they never anticipated. Conference speaker Dr Patrick Dixon, author Futurewise for MTN on consumers, fashions, lifestyles, customer behavior, choices, demographics. (more)

Chad Hurley at Zeitgeist Europe 2007

Interview of co-founder of YouTube by Dr Patrick Dixon - how did he grow the YouTube pehenomenon to a $1.6bn company in just 15 months. What did it feel like? Lessons for every company wanting to impact the online world.

Impact of ageing population in Europe and Russia

Huge consequencies of failure of Europeans to have children - in many nations only 1.3-1.7 children per couple. Expect deficit to be filled with large scale immigration - as is already happening in the UK with a million new entrants in the past three years alone. Video of part of presentation for a financial services company.

Future of marketing and media - Dr Patrick Dixon for Google Zeitgeist

Google event - intro to future of online communities and media, why traditional marketing is dead and how brands will be changed by Web 2.0. CEO summit organised by Google. Dr Patrick Dixon chair of session.

Space Tourism - video Virgin Galactic and interview

Dr Patrick Dixon interviews Stephen Attenborough about space tourism - short flights costing $200,000 and all seats booked for first couple of years. Watch remarkeable video of early flight. Chairing session at Google Zeitgeist CEO Summit.

Connecting with emotion of customers online - Patrick Dixon

Why emotions are so important and why market research sometimes fails to predict how people will feel in future

Future of Electronic Publishing

Speaking at conference today organised by Amdocs - which provides software and consulting for directory publishers.

Big questions about long term future of the Yellow Pages industry which has been (and remains) very profitable in many countries. Pressures from:

Movement of many to online search and mobile, geography sensitive information.
Fact that most small businesses in places like America now have own web pages
Dramatic growth of e-Bay and other community trading sites which are brilliant places for people to go to find local products - and maybe services as well in future
Lack of trust in advertising compared to community reviews by previous customers
Possible ban on sending paper directories to homes of people who do not specifically request them
Competition from tens of thousands of small companies who are also offering help with web promotion to small companies

Question: if directories did not exist, would they be a good business to start up?

Possible scenario

•Google Local starts to dominate with help from local partners
•Formal directories decline except for niche markets eg small town, associations where information does not change / not online or specialist business lists
•Huge shakeout where there is more than one paper directory supplier in same area
•EU nations ban delivery of non-requested paper directories
•Year on year fall in revenue for paper directory suppliers
•Mobile interactive marketing takes off – “just in time”
•Directory enquiry services broaden to include direct sales
•50 billion new web pages and indexes created
•E-Bay and other communities create “living” directories
•Every webmaster adds postal code etc to every web page - maybe in a new widely used meta tag at the top of every page
•Web page builders become obsessed with location
•Google then able to improve search - dumps Google Local / and partnership with most directories

The greatest asset that directory companies have is huge numbers of small business clients and large sales teams who have a personal relationship with them, often over years. This presents a great opportunity for selling new kinds of products and services which could be based on web marketing but could also include a range of other things from insurance to office supplies.

Warren Buffett gives $37bn to Bill Gates' Foundation and Gates to leave Microsoft to run it all

The decision by Bill Gates to give all his time in future to his foundation, and then by Warren Buffett to add $37bn to the fund, will together trigger a series of events of truly lasting significance.

Firstly we can expect many more ultra-high net worth individuals to make similar decisions, giving both time and money to help change the future of our world for the better - albeit on a smaller scale, but the cumulative impact could well be even greater.

Building a better world is a powerful driving motivation behind the fact that almost all ultra-high net worth families have their own charitable foundations.

Warren Buffett is unusual in that he has left it comparatively late in wealth-making to begin his large-scale philanthropic activity.

It is easy to be cynical about such motivation but the fact is that 60% of all US citizens regularly give time to things they believe in and the average gift of time is 200 hours a year. Costed at the average hourly rate for earnings, this is a total gift worth the equivalent of 4.5% of US GDP. Similar proportions of the population give time in the UK and many other EU countries. People give time or money because they feel that in doing so they are able to make a positive difference in some small way to others.

Large-scale philanthropy is just an extension of this normal pattern of community involvement.

This whole area is much misunderstood by many corporations, who tend to regard corporate and social responsibility as a minor addition to the doctrine that companies exist only to make money for shareholders. The trouble is that it is very rare to meet anyone who gets out of bed in the morning passionate about making more shareholder value. Numbers-based leadership is a powerful turn-off to most executives - as I have seen in speaking with senior audiences in many different countries and corporations over the last decade.

It should be no surprise therefore that a recent UK survey showed that 90% of 35-45 year olds in business jobs want to leave, while 60% of 25-35 year olds cannot see any purpose in what they do, working each day for a corporation. Numbers cannot produce passion nor purpose, unless people see what the numbers actually mean in terms of making a difference in ways that they feel are important.

Thus we have a serious mismatch between the passions people have for what they do outside of formal employment - where they gladly work for nothing, and their almost complete lack of interest by contrast in what they are actually paid to do.

If corporations could tap into even 1% of the energy which people enthusiastically devote to "good causes" or which causes Bill Gates and Warren Buffet to give away tens of billions each, we would have a completely different situation in the workplace today.

This is one reason why so-called cause-related marketing has taken off so fast, linking products to things people feel passionate about. In an age where products and services tend to converge in price and quality, values are what makes all the difference.

The second thing we can expect from the Gates and Buffet decisions is that many more business leaders who also feel the same kinds of desires to make the world a better place, are going to feel added courage to use the business itself as a positive driver of change. Why wait until they leave?

And they will know that the majority of their shareholders, staff and customers who also give time and money to things they feel passionate about, are likely to react positively to their leadership, with added commitment and loyalty, so long as the business is well run in every respect.

The third impact of the new Gates - Buffet alliance will be a gathering momentum for radical improvements in Africa, India and other such parts of the world. It will not be easy, but the pressure will grow further to find practical ways to make a difference.

Because of the way the markets devalue currencies of failing nations, as I have discovered in my own AIDS foundation ACET, a single dollar is enough to pay the school fees for an orphan for three weeks in a country like Zimbabwe. A million dollars is enough to hire 5,000 men or women for 3 months. It is hard to grasp the scale of opportunity when many billions of dollars can be converted into currency in some of the poorest nations (sensitively or else it will distort the local economy), in order to invest in a wide range of community-based, sustainable development projects.

And of course health is a basic requirement. The poorest nations continue to suffer needlessly from easily preventable illnesses and terrible handicaps like the loss of site at early ages.

The Bill Gates Foundation has already had significant impact on a wide range of such conditions and we can look forward to far more in the future.

Bill Gates to leave Microsoft - to run his foundation, and gets gift of $37bn from Warren Buffett

Billionaire Buffett to give away $37bn

· Largest donation in US history goes to Gates fund
· Charity giveaway is 85% of 75-year-old's fortune

Source: The Guardian

“It is a gift of unprecedented proportions and will send shockwaves through the world of super-rich philanthropy. The world's second richest man, Warren Buffett, is to give the world's richest man, Bill Gates, the largest charitable gift in history - an estimated $37bn (£20bn). The 75-year-old doyen of the global investment community has pledged to give 85% of his stock in the investment company Berkshire Hathaway to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation started by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.”

Major news that will have a huge impact on global philanthropy. Expect many billions more to be released as others follow their example in a great effort to shape future history in the poorest nations and to help build a better world.

Almost every high net worth person I know has their own personal foundation or is about to set one up… all part of this same intense desire to make a difference in lasting ways.

Cost of divorce keeps more couples together

The quickest way to poverty can be to divorce.  Fewer couples are divorcing in the UK than 5 years – because of the cost, according to a report published in the Daily Telegraph in April 2006.

 

Numbers of marriages ending after less than 5 years in divorce has fallen by 25% since the early 1990s.  Meanwhile for the third year running, the number of marriages is up – to 311,180 – up 1% on the year before.  People are getting married later and are perhaps more thoughtful about it.

The fact is that divorce is usually a traumatic event for all and can be life-shattering for children as all the surveys show.

For more on research on divorce and impact on children see:

 

http://www.globalchange.com/books/rplintro.htm

 

The Future of Nanotechnology - investment grows but nature has beaten the scientists with the world's first nanobots

I am often asked about nanotechnology: load of hype? Industrial miracle? Future threat to human health? The US government has been investing more than $1 billion per year and the EU, Japan, China and other countries are investing over $6 billion per year.

Nanotechnology is the understanding and control of matter at dimensions of roughly 1 to 100 nanometres. At this level of engineering we are beginning to see spectacular advances, particularly in surface coatings, but also in processes which could give a further massive step forward in making things smaller eg computer memory chips.

We can expect to see all kinds of domestic applications – for example fabrics which are better at repelling stains or can be cleaned in jets of compressed air, or new kinds of non-stick, easy to clean surfaces. We will see advances in lubricants and so on.

But when it comes to manufacturing tiny nanotech machines, the talk is far further ahead than the reality. We are not going to see nanobots made by humans anytime soon – except of course by imitating the powerful nanobots which nature makes.

As a physician as well as a futurist I am particularly interested in this – especially through my work with AIDS and the charity ACET – http://www.acet-international.org.

Viruses are essentially nanotech machines which are capable of being carried around around the body, so that they are then able to identify individual cells by their surface characteristics. Once the identification test is passed, the virus legs become firmly attached, and then bend, allowing a needle-like device to puncture the cell surface, injecting the core material of genetic code.

This is then activated automatically inside the cell, taking over command of the cell brain, and turning the cell into a factory of hundreds of millions more identical virus nanobots…

How sustainable is our future?

Talked today to 50 executives at Impact conference today on Corporate and Social Responsibility / sustainable enterprise.  Huge shift taking place inside the largest corporations about these issues and a growing recognition that they are important to consumers, shareholders and staff.  Here are some interesting statistics:

 

•          Only 10% of big ocean fish remain

•          Most global fishing is under threat

•          25% of all mammals face extinction (by 2035 say UN)

•          1 in 8 plant species face extinction

•          CO2 levels are at their highest for a million years

•          Even if all carbon emissions stop, sea levels will go on rising for 1000 years

•          Stabilising CO2 at 450ppm will cost 1% of gross world product (level is 370 parts per million today)

•          Continuing without change could cost 10% of gross world product

•          In 1990 emerging nations produced 39% of the world’s carbon dioxide - by 2010 it will be 55%

 

See the presentation on http://www.globalchange.com/ppt4/sustain

 

 

 

Wikipedia finally tightens up access to some pages - eg Blair and Bush

<a href="http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1800273,00.html">The Observer | UK News | Wikipedia fights off cyber vandals</a>

 

Well it had to happen eventually - it is now more difficult for anyone to go online and add offensive rubbish to people's biographies.

 

It is still extraordinary that 4 million pages could have been created in a way that anyone of a billion potential web users can alter at any time.