Ross Dawson's Top Ten Trends for the Upcoming Decade

Here in more on what to expect in 2010 but it extends to the decade.  Ross Dawson posted his top 10 trends for the 2010s and called it the most exciting decade in human history. I wonder if we can say that at the start of every decade with increasing technology. I still look fondly back at the 1960s but more for personal reasons. I am spoiled and would not want to go back to 60s technology. 

In this post, I will focus on the first two in this post as they relate to the Darwin Awareness Engine’s mission. The first trend is Information Intensity. Ross wrote that, “we will soon consume more media than there are waking hours, by virtue of multi-channeling at most times. Billions of people and places will be media producers, including video streaming from most points of view on the world. We are just at the dawn of an incomprehensible daily onslaught of news and information – some valuable, much useless.’

The topic of information overload has been around for some time, probably since the first enhances to communication technology thousands of years ago. But now with all the user generated content it takes on new meaning. More content was created through social media in 2008 than in all of prior history.  The Awareness Engine helps you find what is relevant to your topics of interest and then lets you decide where to focus within these topics. You do not have to know what you are looking for as in traditional search.

The second trend, Intelligence, is a partial remedy to the first. Ross wrote that while we are swamped by information, “we are now creating a collective intelligence that will filter and respond to what is worthwhile. Reputation measures will drive who we meet, do business with, and date. Machine translation will enable the people of the planet to communicate…”

Darwin offers another way to harness the collective intelligence. Instead of using reputation measures, it looks at relevance and correlation.  Reputation, pioneered by Google, is useful but it can be spammed and it tends to promote the already popular, rather than the unexpected, but useful.  Instead of waiting for linking to occur, the Awareness Engine looks at what is emerging in real time that is relevant to your topics of interest. It does not replace reputation measures but offers an alternative.

Peter Cashmore offered a similar prediction about how your friends will serve as filters for content. Instead of indirectly through reputation, he noted the more direct methods available through channels such as Twitter and Facebook. Darwin allows you to also become your own curator or producer of filters. You can set attractors on your topics of interest: people, places, concepts, and more. Then you can see what emerges. This can be especially valuable for niche areas. You can create your own online magazine.

Ross also offered 10 TENsions That Will Define 2010. One was on a topic we have frequently covered here, Death of Media – Birth of Media. Ross wrote,
”Literally hundreds of newspapers around the world have shut their doors in 2009. Broadcast TV is struggling. Advertising has slumped. Yet as traditional media staggers, a new world of mobile media, social media, video everywhere, and new business models are opening a new era in which media is at the center of the economy.” We would add that traditional media can survive if it learns to make creative use of the new media and not simply try to port old methods to the new media.  Examples include, Radio’s Air America, New York Times, and Los Angeles Times.

Comments

[JWilfong]

Bill,
Yes! Social networks are going to have to begin the filter of this onslaught of information that we receive daily. If they do not do it, how could we possibly rely on stale algorithms to catch what interests us? Sure the marketers want to think they have a handle on our interests, but I would say that our friends, peers, and colleagues actually "know" us. As usual, always enjoy reading your posts. Enjoy the French Quarter.