Someday has arrived.

Someday the net will enable robust, shared 3D experiences.

Someday robust, shared 3D experiences will be secure and stable.

Someday robust, shared 3D experiences that are secure and stable will be relatively simple to produce using mostly off-the-shelf and familiar tools.

Someday robust, shared 3D experiences that are secure and stable, created with off-the-shelf, familiar tools will produce income for those who create them, and those who enable that creation.

Someday robust, shared 3D experiences that are secure and stable and that produce income for creators and enablers will take us to the next level in learning, gaming, and shared online experience.

Someday has arrived, in the form of Blue Mars, from Avatar Reality.

I met Jim Sink, VP for Business Development for Avatar Reality when I interviewed him as he represented his company as a “Fire Starter” at the annual SNS Future In Review Conference. Later, I lunched with Jim and the company co-founder Henk Rogers (of Tetris fame), and science fiction writer Brenda Cooper, and we discussed the future of virtual worlds, augmented reality, and the truly exciting vistas now being opened by faster internet connections and standard processer and graphics boards now capable of running high-end 3D experiences.

Then, last week while in Honolulu to speak on the future of travel and tourism, I took advantage of being there and Jim was kind enough to host an hour-long visit to the offices of Avatar Reality where they are creating Blue Mars, the next big thing in shared, immersive 3D experience on the web. Even though I am familiar with the dreams driving this kind of development, from my years of association with the Human Interface Technology Lab at the University of Washington, I am very impressed with the direction that Blue Mars is taking, and cannot wait for the consumer beta to drop in August 2009. You can sign up for your copy now.

Most of us are familiar with online worlds like World of Warcraft, or Second Life, each of which offers a kind of shared 3D experience. World of Warcraft has succeeded financially with a subsriber model, while Second Life has succeeded by building an internal economy of Linden dollars that correspond to real dollars, some $400 million exchanged in 2008 according to reports.

Blue Mars aims to take us to the next level, by differentiating in several ways. First, the graphics that will be the standard are near big-screen quality. Second, they have invited world developers into a cooperative, shared revenue model, that enables developers to use off-the-shelf graphics tools they are familiar with. Worlds are created off-line, then uploaded. Blue Mars is providing a developer platform with a variety of standard features, like shopping sites and stores, billboards that tie to websites and flash videos, gaming technologies, avatars that have super realism and movement, and clothing that flows and moves like the real thing. Interaction speeds will be very fast, because world elements are fixed and the system is set up in such a way that only elements in a scene that change will be updated in real time, meaning faster response times and a much lower load on the net itself. This increased world stability and fast speed will enable more players to be in a world together. For example, it is possible that many thousands of avatars may attend a stadium event in real time, something like a concert or rally.

World objects, created off-line and fixed at that point, are registered by Blue Mars before they are released into the world. Thus, IP is protected and worlds are more stable than others; only developers may change the world, and rouge community members will not be able to send unregistered objects flying into and sabotaging your scene. Worlds can also be walled from those who are not subscribers. Within worlds subscribers or users may rent their own homes or storefronts, and conduct social and business interactions as in similar online worlds, but again in a more secure way.

The revenue model will be a hybrid and sounds like a winner for Avatar, developers, and users alike. Many worlds will be available – I previewed one called New Venice.

You can watch video previews of Blue Mars features and worlds Blue Mars on YouTube, and as mentioned you can sign up for your own Beta of the client product coming in August.

Blue Mars Trailer (June 2009)

Blue Mars in Development

I have long anticipated the day that we could move to the next level of shared, immersive experience on the web. That someday has arrived.

Glen Hiemstra is a futurist speaker, consultant, blogger, internet video host and founder of Futurist.com. To arrange for a speech contact Futurist.com.

Last week I spoke to the Travel and Tourism Research Association on alternative futures for travel and tourism. It was the 40th Annual Conference of the association, held in Honolulu, and my appearance was coordinated by Goldstar Speakers. The key slides from my brief program are available for download via Slideshare.

I asked where the future of travel and tourism lies, between the vision of a Virgin Galactic for space adventure, and that of the creators of the Null Stern Hotel in Switzerland, meaning the “zero star” hotel in recognition of the current and future austerity of travel?

The heart of the program focused on 4 converging forces driving the future, and 4 emerging trends in travel and tourism. As a futurist speaker who tries always to see the 360-degree view of future forces, I began with a run-down on the primary forces shaping our time and which I see converging into one grand pattern – economic disparity and frugality, expensive energy, demographic destiny related to aging, young and diverse populations, and environmental imperatives with associated changes in life styles.

In the travel and tourism industry these forces are leading to 4 emerging trends:

1. Keeping it local. If trends in energy, economy, and environment continue, then traveling long distances for recreation will become more rare. In order for the resort community to maintain a market, they will need to cater more to a local clientele. This is captured in the concept of the 10-kilometer hotel, one whose prime customers come from the local area for a respite.

2. Alternative transport. Today the local paper in Seattle featured a photo of a local organic farmer delivering his wares via sailboat to the docks in Seattle. He calls it the no-oil food. In the travel and tourism industry this kind of move will be and is being mirrored as people seek out non-motorized experiences like biking through France, or taking trips by sail. Over the longer term, again depending on how energy, environment, and economic trends play out, it is likely that tourists will seek out slower, less energy intensive, even zero-fossile fuel energy experiences.

3. Destination evolution. This trend is underway, as destination resorts focus on becoming greener and more sustainable, more local in their attraction, more astute in their use of information technology for advertising and for management, and more knowledgeable of market trends via research.

4. New whys of travel. It is said that there is graffiti from ancient tourists on the monuments in Egypt. People have always and will always travel to see new places and people, even if they have to walk or ride an animal to do so. That is not going to change. But, one more time depending on how the converging trends play out, we may see a return to the why of travel being for two primary purposes – to visit family, and to seek new adventure. Business travel may decline as 3D-net technologies become robust, and distance travel may decline as economic and environmental imperatives demand. Local travel may fill the need for reconnecting with yourself and recharging the batteries. In fact making that a focus of what you offer in the travel and tourism industry may be one key to the future.

Glen Hiemstra is a futurist speaker, consultant, blogger, internet video host and founder of Futurist.com. To arrange for a speech contact Futurist.com.

Tom Friedman gets it right in his column today, quoting the former CEO of Intel as to what the best path out of recession is. First, require everyone to graduate from High School before they can get a drivers license. Then, as Friedman quotes Craig Barrett…

Barrett argues that we should also use this crisis to: 1) require every state to benchmark their education standards against the best in the world, not the state next door; 2) double the budgets for basic scientific research at the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and the National Institute of Standards and Technology; 3) lower the corporate tax rate; 4) revamp Sarbanes-Oxley so that it is easier to start a small business; 5) find a cost-effective way to extend health care to every American.

Much of what I have been saying for some time.

Glen Hiemstra is a futurist speaker, consultant, blogger, internet video host and founder of Futurist.com. To arrange for a speech contact Futurist.com.

Recently my futurist friend Gerd Leonhard from Basel, Switzerland and I started a new project together called Where is it Going (WIIG). The concept is simple - we record an online conversation about once a week, taking future-related questions submitted anyone, via Twitter. We record 5-8 minute long videos of Gerd and myself, responding to the questions based on what we know. We have also started discussions with a potential partner who would be able to produce higher quality videos. We will let you know about that when it happens.

Today we recorded a conversation responding to three Twitter submitted questions, about the future of our personal media, the future of work, and whether Yogi’s make better futurists. You can listen to the conversation here.

This is how you can participate in WhereIsItGoing (WiiG):

1. Be sure to follow @glenhiemstra and @gleonhard on Twitter.
2. Tweet your future-related questions to us, anytime, and be sure to use the hashtag #wiig (this way we can find your questions via Twitter Search, and you can you also use the hashtag to search for WiiG.
3. If you want your tweets to be included in the live video of the twitter stream (#wiig) please be sure to tweet at 9:00 AM PDT/12 Noon EDT/6PM CET/ 12 midnight Singapore, and follow the live tweets via twitter search; we will publish the finished video on WhereIsItGoing.com soon afterwards. We will be on the tweet streams for about 20 minutes each time we record. The next date will be 30 June 2009.

Spread the word

[Update: Next WIIG recording session changed to July 2, 9:00 AM PDT/12 Noon EDT/6PM CET/ 12 midnight Singapore. Tweet questions with #wiig now or during the live recording.]

I’m preparing a program I’ll be delivering next month for RetailNOW, the conference trade show for the Retail Solutions Providers Association.

A bellweather sector, the retail industry supplies important information on the progression of the economic downturn. How is one of its main providers heading into its annual industry event?

Evidently with some hopeful expectation. The organization president, J. Joseph Finizio, blogs this week about the projected increase in attendance over 2008. Exhibitor numbers are holding steady and may exceed last year as well.

In this industry, like so many others, advantages are gained at the bottom of the cycle. While it’s always hard to pinpoint exactly when things will begin to turn around, we may read some optimism in RetailNOW. At the very least, their numbers indicate an industry-wide committment to increasing key capacities during the downtime. At best, they may be pointing to the early indications of an upswing.

Glen Hiemstra is a futurist speaker, consultant, blogger, internet video host and founder of Futurist.com. To arrange for a speech contact Futurist.com.

One of the most interesting and challenging bits of cognitive dissonance you can find these days is the following conflict: On one side are those who believe that a technological breakthrough related to energy is needed, and that massive investment in said technologies along with life-style changes are vital to the survival of modern civilization. On the other side are those who believe that such a technology breakthrough is unlikely, or that it is too late for such a massive investment in a world where money is scarce and fossil fuels are expensive. Moving beyond that mental frame are those who believe that it is in fact so late that a significant breakdown in industrial civilization is coming and that even a massive die-off of humans is inevitable. Beyond such a wrenching change survivors will emerge into a new-old society that is both fugal and agrarian.

The cognitive dissonance comes for those of us who believe that the available evidence points in both of these directions simultaneously, that both tracks are emerging at the same time, and that we are in a kind of race to see which reality predominates. For example, I believe that a very rapid investment in next energy technologies is critical, and by this I mean most available alternatives to fossil fuels – solar, wind, ocean, thorium-based nuclear, geothermal. I also think that a shift in societal values in industrial countries is critical, toward a more localized, more frugal, and generally smarter life style. At the same time, I accept that it may be too late for some kind of gradual re-set of our energy ways, and that significant dislocations are possible, even probable.

So, when I come across evidence for one view or the other, I tend to find good evidence persuasive, even when it is contradictory.

A great example of this dissonance came across my screens today. First, I read as I do each Monday the weekly blog of James Kunstler. As usual he illustrates the bankruptcy of the view that with a few minor adjustments we will continue what he calls the happy motoring lifestyle into the infinite future. His blog, by the way, is at a new address, and is well worth the time each Monday. Those who comment on his blog tend to exemplify the people who think we are long past the point of no return and that a collapse is coming.

On the other hand, also coming into my screen today was a blog entry from The Oildrum, specifically a guest blog under the byline of “Gail the Actuary” in which an expert on space-based solar power explained how a new approach to the launch of vehicles may be able to cut the cost enough that space-based solar energy would become an answer, even the answer, to our future energy problems. Space-based solar arrays are one of those technologies that are always somewhere over the horizon, and some would say over the rainbow. If you take a few minutes to read this blog, and again the comments, you find the dissonance on full display. On the one hand you have a person saying that there may be an energy answer after fossil fuels. On the other hand you have lots of people not only saying it is not possible, but directly arguing that a human die-back is more desirable than cheap energy.

And so it goes.

At the end of the Fire 2009 conference, an audience member said he felt depressed, that the environmental problems discussed there seemed too large and the time seemed to late to respond. David Brin, the great science fiction writer, also in the audience, responded that we have to hope that humans come up with the breakthroughs, technological and social and values-based, that enable the enterprise of civilization to continue. The alternative is despair.

I thought this summed up things quite well.

Glen Hiemstra is a futurist speaker, consultant, blogger, internet video host and founder of Futurist.com. To arrange for a speech contact Futurist.com.

Recently I’ve begun to get acquainted with Dr. John Kao, and a project he has begun to encourage “large scale innovation” in the world.

Dr. Kao is a former Harvard Business School professor, best known for his books Jamming: The art and discipline of business creativity, and Innovation Nation. His new project, the Institute for Large Scale Innovation, is sponsored by Deloitt LLP. The focus is on developing innovations that can be harnessed to address complex global challenges, as compared to the way we often think of innovation as an exciting new product. Large scale innovations do not have to be huge projects, but rather should have widespread effect and be “appropriately inclusive.”

The Institute plans to develop core programs that include…
…Supporting the emergence of a network of significant innovation leaders with the influence to provide a meaningful stewardship function for innovation at national and international levels.


…Developing agenda-setting intellectual capital that defines large-scale innovation and leads to the development of meaningful tools and best practices.


…Creating high quality learning experiences relevant to the next generation of innovation leaders.


…Underwriting research that documents the emerging global innovation economy, key innovation flows as well as new competitive dynamics and opportunities.

An initial conference was held last week in the Bay Area, a “Global Innovation Summit of the I20.” The Institute invited a group of innovation leaders from around the world to “create an agenda for global stewardship and collaboration regarding large-scale, societal innovation issues.”

We look forward to a report of the results of this summit meeting, and we continue conversations with Dr. Kao and the Institute regarding possible collaborations with Futurist.com.

This Friday, June 12, I have the opportunity to address a conference on Affordable Housing, at the Everett Washington Events Center. There is still time to register.

As you may know I have been speaking about the future of housing, and community design, for some time, and particularly since September 2007 when I made a splash at the annual Washington Housing Conference. There, I was one of the early public voices warning that the housing finance bust was looming, and that it would be worse than acknowledged at the time.

This week, I am still considering just how to approach this event, but am more and more convinced of two things:

1. The housing finance crash was actually a result of four intersecting crises converging at the wrong time - the easy debt society, the end of a century of cheap energy, a demographic mis-match between what is being built and what is needed, and looming concern about climate change. All of these forces are combining to cause increasing numbers of people to reconsider where and how they live, and making old patterns of development potentially less viable.

2. The mis-match between the cost of houses we have been building, and the ability of wage earners to afford them without creative financing is not yet reconciled. We have a way to go before housing is affordable.

I will see where I go with this on Friday, but stop by if you have time.

Glen Hiemstra is a futurist speaker, consultant, blogger, internet video host and founder of Futurist.com. To arrange for a speech contact Futurist.com.

Showed up in google news alerts twice this week…

The first one, two actually, refers to a program that I helped to create with well known stress and anxiety expert Lucinda Bassett. She has developed and now has a available a 5-CD program called “The Solution .” I collaborated on the first CD in the series, all of which are designed to help you manage in the current stressful times.

Check out the Sun Herald.com and also Bio-Medicine.org

The second alert is from the Investors Business Daily. In an article entitled “Turn Your Team Around” the author quotes some material from my book Turning the Future Into Revenue, on the nature of creating a vision.

Check out Investors Business Daily

Glen Hiemstra is a futurist speaker, consultant, blogger, internet video host and founder of Futurist.com. To arrange for a speech contact Futurist.com.

Last week included four eventful days at the annual Future In Review conference put on by the Strategic News Service. This year, the last at the San Diego Del Coronado was the best of the five I have attended, of the eight that have been held. (full disclosure – I am on the planning committee offering my thoughts as a futurist consultant and speaker).

What began as a high level conference about the 5-year future of technology has become over time a 360-degree look at the issues and challenges facing the world, the near term potentials in technology, and the need for concerted system-wide action to produce a more just and prosperous world. This is quite an evolution and has made the FiRe conference one of the most influential global events each year.

You can read more about FiRe 2009 here, and also learn how to register for FiRe 2010, which will be held in Los Angeles (Palos Verdes) next year.

FiRe is the kind of conference that begins early each day and runs more or less non-stop till late evening. Thus this report hits only the highlights, for me.

Two themes dominated the program – earth in peril, and technology driving the economic rebound.

Here are tech innovations discussed in the general program that seemed particularly important…

…The Cloud. This concept is subject to hype and is dismissed by many for that reason. Simply defined it means the ability of servers to hold all personal data and to run applications so that personal computing machines can go back to the future as terminals that access the cloud. In practice it may mean that you could walk up to any terminal, anywhere and access your own “desktop” that actually resides in a variety of servers. One Cloud expert explained to me that this would enable schools, for example, to resurrect obsolete computers, turn them into terminals, and provide inexpensive high-level computing to everyone. There are many hurdles to jump before this becomes a robust, and stable reality, but the cloud is a clear trend in future computing.

…The Gigabit Age. A great story around the world, less so in the U.S., is the continuing installation of much improved bandwidth via fiber and wireless. We learned about an economic stimulus project in Australia, for example, to replace copper wires with fiber to something like 90% of all buildings and homes, enabling Australia to leap ahead in the information economy by providing net speeds dozens of times faster than available in the U.S. This $43 billion project would cost $350 billion in the U.S., but the U.S. is spending only $7 billion on enhanced bandwidth as part of the stimulus, a missed opportunity. In Australia, a key driver for more bandwidth is the Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder project.

…The Web becomes the Stream – As we move beyond Web 2.0 into an evermore interactive network, in which users send as much material as they consume, via social nets and video sites, and so on, it becomes obvious that we are progressing from the Internet through the Web to the Stream. It is the constant flow of information that matters. (When Sonia Sotomayor is nominated to the Supreme Court, within about 90 seconds her bio on Wikipedia has been updated.) No static website or traditional media company can keep pace.

…Electric Cars Progressing. Elon Musk brought the Tesla for more test drives (below is my turn), but more importantly reported a just-completed agreement with Daimler to partner in producing the Tesla Motors sedan set for delivery in 2011, at half the cost of the Tesla sports model, with a 300+ mile range on a single electric charge. (Elon also reported on progress with private space launch, including the contract with NASA to be a cargo delivery vehicle for the space station.)

Glen Hiemstra test drives the Tesla at FiRe 2009

Other Tech Tid-bits - Mark Hurd, CEO of HP explained why printing will continue to grow when only 20% of current printing is digital. He also noted that they build manufacturing capacity overseas so that they can manufacture close to the buyers; only 8% of their cost is labor, so cheap labor is not the driver, being close to customers is. This was interesting.

Apple is reported to be purchasing 7-inch screens; the question is for what?

Thorium may be the nuclear fuel of the future – it is more abundant than uranium, cannot be processed into weapons grade material, decays in about 75 years instead of thousands, and can be used in current reactor designs. Since the energy future may depend on getting energy from many sources, this may keep nuclear in the game.

A smart grid will dramatically reduce energy consumption, especially if humans become part of the “smart.” A recent test in Colorado by Accenture energy showed that installing a small screen on the refrigerator in homes that monitors electricity usage around the house and makes the numbers visible led to 50% decrease in energy consumption. Knowing what is going on in real time makes a difference.

Calit2 Lab Open House at UCSD: Larry Smarr once again organized an evening at Calit2, the future of computing and telecommunications program at UCSD. I will blog about some specific things there in the future as well – highlights included progress with super-hi definition screens and real-time telepresence, life-like robotics, and the use of wide arrays of sensors to learn about geographic information.

…Fire Starters – the breakthrough companies. Each year at Fire new companies are nominated to be “Fire Starters,” those early stage companies with a compelling product or service and a chance to change the world. This year there were 13 companies. One of my tasks was to interview the principals in these companies for short web-video introductions. Those videos will roll out over the next weeks, and I will blog about each company separately, but here are a couple of standouts:

Smaato – bringing order and scale to the world of mobile advertising.

Blue Mars, from Avatar Reality – soon to debut a robust, multi-user next generation online virtual world.

SIMtone – bringing cloud computing closer to reality and making it greener.

Vesta Health Systems – developing a technology platform for a simple, strong disinfectant effective against virus and bacteria.

Earth in Peril

The second and dominant theme at FiRe 2009 was “earth in peril.” This was kicked off by the opening dinner keynote from Professor V ‘Ram’ Ramanathan. Dr. Ramanathan is a distinguished researcher in climate science and global warming. His databased explanation of where global warming is now was sobering to all, even those most knowledgeable on the subject. His program title, “Practical Strategies for Solving the Climate Problem” was intriguing, and he delivered. It turns out that while CO2 is the biggest long-term problem in that we are producing so much, and it is so long lasting in the atmosphere, the other green house gases offer some hope of faster success in reducing global warming. Methane, soot, and other greenhouse emissions are easier to reduce, and what is already in the atmosphere dissipates in months or years, not centuries. Thus, if we can eliminate these green house gases soon, the impact will be immediate, and will buy time for the more difficult problem of reducing CO2.

Beyond climate change, there was a major emphasis on the health of the oceans and ocean species. Roger Payne and Lewis Douglas from the Ocean Alliance reported on new research showing chromium to be a problem pollutant in ocean species. Paul Watson of Greenpeace reported on the battle with the Japanese over whaling. And film producer and director Louis Psihoyos presented a premier showing of his documentary, The Cove, winner of the Sundance and Cannes festival awards. This powerful film highlights the plight of dolphins and the secret industry that kills them. The film opens theatrically in August 2009.

CTO Challenge – the Global Water Shortage

A final feature of the FiRe event has become the “CTO Challenge.” Chief technology and information officers are given a problem to solve, and a couple of days to solve it. This year the challenge was the looming water shortages, in and around San Diego. The team did an outstanding job which we will report more fully as well, but a highlight was the idea of covering canals with anti-evaporation covers, and those with solar cells to collect energy to run the pumps and provide excess energy from an already established right-of-way. Great idea.

Final thought – best FiRe yet. Join the party next year.