“After COVID-19, Nothing Will Be The Same”
We recently reviewed the events of 2015 to try to spot gray cygnets. A cygnet, if you aren’t up on your obscure animal names, is a baby swan, and a “black swan” is a high-impact, unforeseen event.
So a gray cygnet is a foreshock, a weak signal, of potential events to come, neither blatantly obvious nor entirely unforeseen.
The events we noted for last year were:
- algorithmic profiling of consumers using factors such as race and social circles
- consumer DIY arriving in biotechnology
- growing threats to antibiotics
- experiments in universal basic income
- bold new biotech approaches in China
- progress in creating blockchain-based companies free of human control
- signs that quantum computing is making real progress
- new approaches to manufacturing to support individualized goods
- copyright creeping beyond what we think of as intellectual property into physical products
For analysis, download the document here.