The Future, in two minutes
February 19th, 2007 by Hugh KennedyHere are my favorite items from Fortune Magazine’s “What’s Next?” column:
* Entertainment and advertising will continue to penetrate more media as a cohesive set of marketing offerings. To quote Linda Kaplan Thayer, “We have become an entertainment-centric society, where the path of least resistance is the one that amuses or startles us most.”
* The Web becomes increasingly spatial (or metaversal), and decreasingly flat. Just pop onto Second Life and create an avatar if you want to see what some of the excitment is about (fun fact: Mitch Kapor of Lotus 1-2-3 fame is Linden Lab’s chairman). You may soon be meeting your colleagues there for post-meeting meetings. I’d love to, if I can figure out how to get my clothes back on. Move quickly, though: IBM already owns 24 islands, and there’s a Sears store where you can mock up your next kitchen. My colleagues may remember me touting Melinda Davis’ The New Culture of Desire a few years ago. Everything she prophesized about the desire for inner worlds and yoda brands is coming true, here and elsewhere.
* Resveratrol. It’s in the skin of red grapes, and given its penchant to create new mitochrondia (and replace older klunkers) using the enzyme sirtuin, can do everything from keep weight down to prevent Parkinson’s (that is to say, slow down aging). Check out SirtrisPharma.com for more. Or wait 20 years and live to be 150.
* Consumer health care. If you believe Newt, it will look more like Travelocity. And we’ll be able to see the quality and cost of healthcare delivery online (as one of our own clients predicts, and is helping to enable).
Oh, and XM Radio will merge with Sirius. But we all saw that coming.