The Future of Collaboration

The Future of Collaboration hackathon was held intercontinentally in Silicon Valley and India on July 12 and 13, 2013. While demos necessarily focused on technical solutions (using communication-based APIs from WebRTC, Media Network Services, vLine, and Twilio (most of which do not yet work on most au courant wearbles computing platforms)), several other interesting qualitative considerations arose.

E-labor Marketplaces for Teams or Groups 
One team proposed the idea of elabor marketplaces for teams or groups. This could engender a new conceptualization of ratings regarding qualitative factors (for dating, friends, employer recruiting) – to develop a more specific understanding of how teams work well together. New dimensions and metrics could be articulated to provide detail about team forming, storming, and norming steps, group dynamics, how people develop affinity and respect for each other, and intrinsic and extrinsic reward systems.

Live Interaction MOOCs (massive open online course platforms) 
Another team suggested the next wave of functionality for online elearning environments: live interaction with two-way video for group discussions. Similar to elabor marketplaces for groups, the concept of the new functionality brings the underlying activity into sharper relief. Here the underlying activity shifts to ‘what it is to be a good discussant’ - the different qualities and roles that discussion participants may exhibit, become explicitly aware of, and improve. Some examples of good discussant skills are restating the issue, extending the topic in useful ways, bringing in resources and examples, empathizing, engaging in active listening, encouraging others to state their views, peer acknowledgement, and topic closure. One can imagine the ‘Top 10 Discussant Qualities’ certificate that could be peer-evaluated and useful to list on a resume or sought by employment recruiters.

Robotic benefits could accelerate into the service and software industries

An animated discussion about the future of robotics occurred at the September 24, 2011 Boulder Colorado Future Salon. One claim is that the last few decades in robotics might be analogous to the status of the computing industry in the 1950-1970s, growing slowly but surely, and suggesting that the pervasiveness and impact of robotics could start to accelerate. There has been significant progress in agricultural automation and factory automation, and this could spread rapidly to service industries and information technology industries.

On the one hand this is the next logical step in fulfilling the ongoing human dream of using technology to provide more free time. On the other hand, while so far robotics has not had a big negative impact on jobs, a more rapid move to automation in more sectors could result in a more significant displacement of human capital.

Industries of the future
There is a tremendous opportunity to identify the industries of the future and start them. Future industries could be clustered by areas such as sustenance (food, energy, and clean resources), health, productive activity, entertainment, and well-being. One obvious group of future technologies will focus on food, for example, vertical farming and lab-grown meat. Mental well-being and enhancement is virtually untapped, although there is some preliminary activity in applying behavioral change and happiness research, and calming technologies. Some key dynamics that govern human behavior will not be going away in the short-term such as the demand for status-garnering and reputation-building (why gaming has been so successful), so industries providing opportunities for this would be well-pitched.