Media futurist Gerd Leonhard is back! “Don't worry, I'm not going to speak again,” he grins, introducing two speakers. David Smith is CEO of Global Futures and Foresight, which does 'futurist research' and consults for big brands. “His presentation is gonna kick your butt,” says Leonhard.Oh man, he's going to talk quickly, he says. I'll do my best. “I want to look at the people. Fundamentally the things that are driving change around the world is not just technology… It's people. We. Us.”He brings up the infamous quote from British scientist William Thomson from 1899 – “Radio has no future. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. X-Rays will turn out to be a hoax.” And Smith points out that even when Boeing built a ten-seater plane, its engineer said “There will never be a bigger plane”.The point: we're often very poor at seeing new horizons – nothing is going to stand still, but we often think it will. So radio – the New York Times said in 1939 that TV will never be a serious competitor to radio – “the average family hasn't time for it”.And now tomato ketchup. I know. And Heinz took 130 years to figure out that it [...]
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