TrendsWatch – Page 4 – American Alliance of Museums

Me/We/Here/There: museums and the matrix of place-based augmented devices

By Elizabeth Merritt

“It turns out that the killer application for virtual reality is other human beings. Build a world that people want to inhabit, and the inhabitants will come.” —Charles Stross Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are portals to …
Futurist Friday: Five Years of Forecasting

By Elizabeth Merritt

About 4,000 people a year download TrendsWatch—CFM’s annual forecasting report–as a free PDF. But we print a couple thousand physical copies each year as well. Some people prefer to go off-line for their reading, enjoy …
Futurist Friday: Coming this Fall, the First Cyborg Olympics

By Elizabeth Merritt

One of the themes I explore in TrendsWatch 2016 is the blurring boundaries between ability, disability and augmented ability. We are experiencing a surge in “assistive technology” that can compensate for physical impairments …
Tools for Exploring the Future

By Elizabeth Merritt

This post is one of a series highlighting insights, recommendations and resources from TrendsWatch 2016, the latest edition of CFM’s annual forecasting report. Download your free PDF copy here. It may provoke some giggles that …
Capture the Flag: the struggle over identity and representation

By Elizabeth Merritt

#TrendsWatch 2016, artist @GynoStar @BreeNewsome #TakeDownTheFlag Follow the link in the photo caption to the associated story. You can find more glimpses of the future (and links) on CFM’s Pintere…
Introducing TrendsWatch 2016

By Elizabeth Merritt

TrendsWatch 2016 is now up on the web! You can download your free PDF copy from the Alliance website. (Print copies will be available later this spring from the AAM Bookstore.) Here are the chapters in this year’s report: Labor 3.0: new …
Ethical Everything: managing the moral marketplace

By Elizabeth Merritt

“To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.”—Douglas Adams Increasingly the press and our peers remind us that each purchase we make and each bite we …
Wearable Tech: when “bring your own device” means shirt and shoes*

By Elizabeth Merritt

“When the Internet first emerged, no one could have conceived of the multiplicity of ways it would change our lives; solve function problems, yes, but also radically change our worldview. Wearables have this kind of potential because our …
A Rising Tide: the changing landscape of risk

By Elizabeth Merritt

“How do we plan for a future in which change, and water, are the new normal?” —Urban Land Institute Boston While politicians and pundits continue to argue about climate change, nearly everyone else—including oil companies, the insurance …
It’s Personal: one size does not fit all

By Elizabeth Merritt

“At the forefront of these revolutionary possibilities is personalized medicine, which is the idea of precisely tailoring each person’s medical care to his or her own unique genetic makeup. In fact, if all goes as we envision, today’s …