Visionary thinking doesn’t come from customers. They’re paying us to do that thinking for them. To anticipate what they’ll need someday, and build it just in time.

Any business needs a blend of both current-demand development and future development. Overemphasizing the present means we are stagnating. Overemphasizing the future means we will continually be “too early” for any market.

Everyone has an ability to see the future and help shape our path towards it. To that end, items in this document can be added/adjusted/debated. Some of it certainly will not come true. The point is for us to consistently have an eye towards the future so we can continue to be a company that innovates, and doesn't become complacent.

Summary

I believe that Localist spins up into three broad categories:

1. Technology (information, media)
2. Society (identity, people, community)
3. Experiences (experiencing the world, experiencing each other)

All three will continue to evolve independently, but will also begin to coalesce, until they eventually merge < 100 years from now (cybernetics). Our bodies and brains will virtually separate. Technology and society will be inextricably linked, and our experiences will be perceived through that lens. Our context of the world that exists today will be hard to comprehend (like imagining life in the medieval times in today’s Internet age).

Notice that I don’t consider ‘events’ a top-level category (for us). To me, events just happen to be the lens through which we view tech and society. Events are where the two converge.

What's underneath this convergence is information. There is A TON of information in the world, and it’s growing exponentially. It's what makes these days feel so chaotic. We're in an era of too much content and our brains haven't evolved to parse it all this quickly. We all feel overwhelmed, and will only feel more overwhelmed as time passes. There will likely be tech solutions to help us parse this level of information better, because we're not biologically evolved to do it naturally.

With all that information comes a lack of connectedness between people. There’s tons of information, but it’s the Wild West. It’s not being handled responsibly, not being used productively. The more information we’re presented with, the less time we have to process it all. When we get overwhelmed, we resort to system-1 thinking, which means we jump to conclusions, rather than taking time to consider what we’re seeing.

System-1 thinking is a huge problem that has existed for generations. It underpins stereotypes, maintains systemic inequality, and stifles innovation. The problem gets even bigger when our survival depends on us staying in System-1 due to information-overload.

Localist has a role to play in addressing this. We can use information to drive personal connections in a deep, meaningful way.

The result:

• A more empathetic society — people listen more when they’re meeting face to face
• A more informed citizenry — people learn when they witness things first-hand
• There will be an internet of events — so many events are like “the dark web” they can’t be discovered without knowing where they are already. We can flip that — making event discovery as easy as finding a Wikipedia page.
• We will own the story of how strong communities form. By painting a full picture of events, we’ll know how people connect in person, and what even just a single event leads to over a year, five years, or a decade, in terms of community impact.
• There will be more self-actualized people in the world, moving them further up Maslow’s hierarchy, by creating opportunities for people to feel more fulfilled.

Events are the instruments that build that result. We’re the conductor.

Tech & Society Predictions/Trends

By 2025

• Realtime events
  • Taking traditionally asynchronous activities and making them real-time (we will hear "this thing happened" less, and "this thing is happening" more)
  • Opportunity: live-streaming everything from all angles, captured for posterity, more accurate history books.
• Event hyperinflation
  • Like news, because the barrier to running a (virtual) event is so low, their individual value will be diminished. People will be more selective about events they attend, filtered by the depth of connections they could make.
• Metaverse
  • While technology (glasses, goggles, etc.) is still in its infancy, it's "good enough" for basic deep relationships start to form. A future without IRL starts to take shape.
• IRL
  • Communities that meet offline will become the strongest, outlasting any digital fiefdoms. They will have the loudest voices, and dictate how society evolves over time. BUT they will also feel very inconvenient.
• Events feed IRL
  • Connection is the key metric through which marketing and HR teams measure their performance.
  • Marketers will use events as a channel that is as important as blogging/content is now
  • HR will use events as a primary recruitment and retention tool
• Apps go subscription
  • “App fatigue” isn’t an erosion of app downloads, but a plateau. The reason for this is not on the consumer demand side, but the developer side. There is little incentive today for an app developer to continue to improve their app, or even support it, after the consumer has made their one time purchase.
  • This whole model will change to a subscription model over the next 5 years, like SaaS has.
  • Instead of paying $4.99 once for an app, consumers might pay $.95 per month. This drives developer support incentive.
• We won't own anything
  • Most people don't truly own their house, or car (the bank does). More recently, we stopped owning music, movies, content in general. Even iPhones went to a monthly subscription model. That raises the question: what's left for us to own? Our identities. But Google, Facebook, et al already "own" a lot of that (we can't decide who we share our personal information with, for example).
• Data-as-a-service platforms
  • Platforms like segment.io will continue to pop up. Winner will take most, but long-term, there will be a mass consolidation that devalues a lot of these single players over the long-term.
  • The only value in data will be first-party that can't be replicated, bought, or licensed elsewhere.
• The rise of the “Devsumer”
  • The ‘No Code’ movement will continue to evolve to the point where just about anyone who’s familiar with a computer can build their own app. Democratizes and devalues app development, shifting engineers further towards A.I/M.L work.
• Filter bubbles will intensify
  • Next election will likely indicate this, with people becoming even more ‘entrenched’ in their view, even if they believe the problem with the country is being “fixed.” In reality, their worldview just won, but there are a whole host of people who feel differently that they will never become aware of.
  • Also a direct result of system-1 thinking, and information overload. Thinking critically takes too many mental calories.
• Slow grind towards acceptance of "personalization," and surrender of identity
  • At the expense of privacy
  • I.e. "give us your information, let us do whatever we want with it, but some annoying thing might feel more convenient to you." PreCheck is an example.
• Peak privacy/anonymity
  • We will see the peak of privacy demand. This will wane, turning back into heavy data collection/exploitation for the following decades.
• The rise of micro-influencers
  • With EU banning user tracking, a micro-influencer industry is born. You could have as few as 1,000 followers and get paid for selling to that small audience. It’s still more effective than untracked ad targeting.
• Remote workforce at scale
  • The entire office workspace model will go away in exchange for rent-a-desks. The country will spread out more.
• “Influencer” as a title, previously panned, becomes an accepted title. Like how “Blogger” was in the 00s.

By 2030

• A.I.
  • micro-predictions will evolve to macro-predictions. We will see it first appearing in healthcare, finance, and legal fields.
  • Public ledger-based verification (blockchain) of photos and videos will become common to counter deepfakes.
• “Offliners”
  • The movement of offliners begins. Digital minimalists who are proud to not own a cell phone, or be tracked.
• Data
  • The consensus seems to be that data is the new oil. I would argue that data is only truly valuable when it’s all combined. Every private company owns their little piece, but to actually apply AI, ML, DL, data science to it, it needs to be pooled together. Who could own that pool? A government? A trust?
  • I suspect the latter -- we’re seeing early indications of it with Facebook’s recently announced Libra cryptocurrency. It’s being used as a virtual currency for now, but could easily be adapted to be a user identity/data pool that can be queried by paying customers.
  • Nobody should own this data. Like international waters. But anyone can apply new algorithms to it to see how it responds.
• Privacy/user data boomerang
  • There is a big brouhaha happening right now where demand for identity privacy is intensifying. I believe this is temporary. It’s a symptom of companies exploiting data completely unchecked. I think societies will make a small measure of improvement to engender trust of users.
  • The privacy pendulum will then swing back. Once users believe they are in control again, they will allow companies to use it -- even more than they did before.
• Government regs
  • I actually don’t see a GDPR clone taking shape in the US in terms of the government creating regulations.
  • I can see private companies getting together to agree on privacy standards that they all adhere to that meet the expectations of users. It will fall short of GDPR’s strictness, but will ease the minds of users to the point where they will continue to share their data.
  • The one holdout here is Apple. Their products are increasingly obfuscating personal data from the big user data companies (Google, Facebook, etc.), and they will not back down from it in the long term.
• Metaverse
  • The first true convergence of real and virtual. Brief moments in metaverse experiences will feel indistinguishable from the real thing
  • When VR takes off, real life will seem boring
• Corporate messaging
  • Ads will no longer carry a disclaimer; they will simply be a fact of life. If you see a logo or product out in the wild at all, someone paid for it to be there.
  • Anything “announced” by a company will be considered “fake” and thus dismissed outright. Instead, corporations will devolve into “meme-speak” exclusively as a way to communicate with their audience.
  • The line between ML bots trying to appear real (in service of a larger corporate purpose), and actual people talking, will be blurred.
  • The line between corporate speech and original speech will be indistinguishable.
  • Personal identity = brands you associate with, full stop.
• Drones
  • The first commercial drone deliveries will begin; new air traffic rules will be implemented to handle them. The skies will become noisier, literally.
• Energy
  • “Off-grid” housing will become a viable option for most homes as solar + batteries get cheaper and more efficient.
  • Oil companies rebrand as solar/wind companies
• Procreation
  • Saving sperm/eggs/embryos will be a standard practice for anyone under age 25.
• Food
  • The best performing stock in this decade will be a lab-grown meat company.
• WASM replaces native apps
  • Web tech evolves to the point where it can do virtually everything a native app can, using mature, tried and tested languages that work cross-platform.

By 2035

• Digital identities
  • They will become defined and owned by someone.
  • We will have digital identities that allow any person to decide what data is allowed to ‘play in the pool’. The incentive for them to allow it is tied to enhancing their lives from a cybernetic point of view. In exchange, they lose their privacy.
• IRL
  • In-person becomes a novelty, like vinyl records. For nostalgia. Even true intimacy could be virtual in the future.
• Internet
  • Starlink will be the first worldwide Internet provider. Geographically-linked carriers become obsolete. 90% of the world’s population will be online.
• Procreation
  • The invention of the artificial womb will raise new questions about abortion and rights. It will be technically possible to have a child without any physical interaction.

By 2040

• Problems that were previously “solved” become hard again.
  • We’re seeing it now with Moore’s Law breaking (CPUs aren’t doubling any more). We’re running into it with energy. More will come.
• YouTube will eat the world
  • Higher (or all?) education, cable companies, media companies.
• Community consolidation
  • Communities have typically been the hubs that draw people together. But the internet is eating the world. Rather than putting the onus on individuals to go “seek out” their communities, the communities come find them.
  • Each person will be the hub in their own personal “community,” which is a collection of people they know from various other communities.
  • An early example of this is Reddit -- a single list of information with varying topics and people, based on the users choice to follow. No one community is the same. The whole equals the sum of its parts.
• Privacy
  • Privacy will not be valuable because it is nothing in the face of an “enhanced self.” Convenience has always trumped security (check out Pre check vs. TSA). Privacy will be the other shoe to drop.
• Experiences and relationships
  • 20 years - society
  • They will become one of the few unique possessions we will own. Everything else is either rented, leased, not unique, or temporary.
• China goes deeper with eugenics (cell gene modification) while offliners insist on going “all natural,” with no gene changes for their offspring. The first wave of “superhumans” become parents themselves.

By 2070

• Cybernetics - the convergence of tech and society
  • True unification of wetware and hardware (people + tech) where you can no longer separate the two.
• Metaverse
  • Almost all events are virtual; people have very little reason to leave their homes. True social connection is simulated well enough to achieve the required mental release.
• Artificial General Intelligence. True AI, basically (AGI) is finally realized
• Food
  • 90% of meat will be lab-grown.