Research Roundup

July 1-20, 2009

Tools for the Future
Social Trends, etc.
Other articles, essays, and recent items of interest
Refresh and Reflect

Tools for the future:

1. Entertainment in the UK in 2028 is a projection from the Office of Communications (Ofcom), the UK's equivalent to the FCC. The report has a narrow focus: trying to predict the “spectrum” required to produce and disseminate the entertainment that used to be disseminated primarily through broadcast technologies like television and radio. But it also has an ambitious scope and methodology: “[We realized that] it is impossible to predict with any certainty what the UK entertainment sector will look like in 20 years time—technology is rapidly changing the types of entertainment services which are possible and expanding the ways in which they might be delivered. To deal with this uncertainty we have produced a small number of scenarios for the likely state of UK entertainment in 2028. Our aim is to bring together economic, social, technology, regulatory and business drivers in a coherent way so as to span the space of possible states of the sector 20 years from now.” Most of these trends apply to the United States as well.

2. Ericsson, the Swedish telecom giant, is also looking to the future in a splashy yet substantive website devoted to Life in 2020. As the welcome page explains, “The year 2020 has become a focus at Ericsson. How will the world evolve? What habits and needs will people have? And what kinds of new technologies will they use to make life easier? Our way to explore what's ahead is to create a virtual future.” This future includes a rainbow of diverse consumers around the globe, some cool gadgets, and a serious look at how people may become even more connected through corporations, global nonprofits, and new technologies.

3. “Inspiring the Technological Imagination: Museums and Libraries in a Digital Age” is an ongoing project sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation. Find out more from the Futures of Learning blog. The big question is “How might institutions [including museums and libraries] change to take advantage of the learning opportunities provided by new digital media?”

4. In another library-related look to the future, the American Library Association has launched a 2015 Environmental Scan as part of its strategic-planning process for the next half-decade. “In order to better understand the environment and trends that will shape our future,” ALA is “inviting member groups to share articles, reports, studies, surveys and links that they think are relevant and useful as we begin developing the plan.” One of the first items added to the list was CFM's own trends paper, Museums & Society 2034 — but the list is growing rapidly. A must-see for anyone interested in social, cultural, intellectual, or technological trends likely to affect libraries and kindred institutions in the years ahead.

Social Trends, etc.:

1. The 2009 SREB Fact Book on Higher Education contains detailed information about education conditions and trends in 16 Southern states. Among the projections: in 2022, 31% of public high school graduates in the South will be Hispanic, which is more than double the current percentage; white students will decline from 60% to 47% of public high school graduates in the same period; and black students will decline from 23% to 20% of the public high school graduates. More than half of the population growth in America over the next 20 years is projected to be in the states represented by the Southern Regional Education Board.

2. According to the high-tech blog Boing-Boing, “financial shenanigans” over the past forty years (and especially the past decade) have essentially “wiped out all productivity gains from digital technology.” A more nuanced analysis of the data comes from the authors of a new report by the Deloitte Center for the Edge, which points out that “return on assets for U.S. Companies … has steadily fallen to almost one quarter of 1965 levels, while labor productivity has continued to improve.” The goal of the Deloitte “Shift Index” is to “make longer-term performance trends more relevant and actionable” — but as they say on Wall Street, past performance is no indicator of future success.

3. The Nature Conservancy presents Design for a Living World, a high-style, low-environmental-impact vision of green design for the future. They “commissioned high-profile designers such as Isaac Mizrahi, Kate Spade, and others to produce textiles, furniture, jewelry, handbags, and decorative objects that were sustainable and used materials and methods from local craftspeople around the world.” (Description courtesy of the Internet Scout Project.)

4. Some recent findings about young people in America:

Other articles, essays, and recent items of interest:

1. In “Taking the Measure,” Ryan Streeter of The American Interest—a right-leaning journal—explains why the tools most “market watchers” use to “measure and assess financial phenomena [are] inadequate.” This may also explain why donors have such a difficult time evaluating the performance of charities (including museums).

2. A new data mapping tool from ZoomProspector shows museum density by county across the United States: http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/us-economy-and-statistics-map. For the data geeks out there: I'm not sure what the underlying database is, but my guess is the Economic Census, which only captures about half of the museums in the country. Still, the pattern of museum distribution is consistent with everything else we know about the distribution of museums in the country.

3. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Internet—or, to be more precise, the 40th anniversary of the Darpanet computer network that spawned the Internet and the World Wide Web. The Open University in the UK celebrates the event with a series of podcasts, including documentaries, lectures, and archived interviews with some of the Internet pioneers (like Tim Berners-Lee and Vint Cerf).

4. This summer also marks the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing. Amidst the hoopla and history, there are more wistful reflections on “the fallen dream of the moon landing” and the decline in scientific achievement (according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, “significantly fewer Americans volunteer scientific advances as one of the country's most important achievements than did so a decade ago” while “fully 85% of scientists see the public's lack of scientific knowledge as a major problem for science”).

Refresh and Reflect:

1. The Future Of Dressing Rooms (real bodies, virtual clothing).

2. Virtual Graffiti (real walls, virtual paint).