 I've been coming to Dublin for 25 years. It's a pretty amazing place still despite the rain I currently live in Switzerland. It's really interesting. I I lived in the US for 17 years I was born in Germany and now I live in Switzerland. So if I speak like everything is awesome That's my American speaking If I speak about perfection, that's my German background if I say nothing, that's my Swiss background. You're just kidding So I want to talk to you about the future of content and media First of all, let's think about this for a second right what makes content and media really powerful The future of content and media in my view is not technology its humanity What kind of content touches us as people Has little to do with how we generate it Has all to do with who we are and what the context is Technology of course is changing everything to do with media But let's not make the mistake and say well just because it is mobile You know, of course, you know that in five years everything is mobile including our brain When your brain is already mobile just look around you Me and the mobile phone is essentially a brain extension What we do on the mobile is backing up our brain outsourcing a memory picking our partners Doing all the things that we used to do with our own heads Now you can argue that's sometimes a good thing sometimes a bad thing But really what happens here in our future Is something very interesting and so I want to talk about quickly what I do as a futurist and Some of them what I do is a futurist, which is a pretty common word in the Anglo sphere In mainland Europe most people don't know what a futurist is, you know, they think it's either a madman or some sort of Cocktail of surprises But I look at a five-year time frame, so I'm not like Ray Codeswell or Alvin Tovla. Unfortunately, I would make more money their way but I Surprise people with interesting things I look at things sometimes that are painful if you watch House of Courage You know what exactly what that code is from Sometimes I have to put fear into people because that's how they change in the future and sometimes of course I go for excitement So basically the most important thing I can tell you right off the bat is that we're looking at an exponential future Now this is a really strange thing for people to understand because as humans. We are not exponential We don't have even the remote potential to be exponential. We're linear. We're wet where right where we can't scale with technology not yet I'm not sure we would want that But everything around us becoming digital is being automated is being disintermediated Automation for example and content is all over us. I mean there's companies like narrative science that write articles literally like write articles Pretty soon the first tech talk will be held with a robot giving a talk Of course, that would be pretty easy Just say awesome and change the world for the common good a lot and then it would be fine But the challenge of exponential change is amazing There's huge opportunities here because now if you look at this curve, we're at the takeoff point The stuff we talked about in the 90s in the first wave of the Internet is finally actually happening I remember the paperless office, right? Oh, yes paperless office. It's actually happening now Flying cars happening now Self-driving cars to some degree happening now Look at this slide. How long will it take for computers to have the same power as the human brain? Same thing right what Henry referred to gradually then suddenly Not much happens for a long time and we don't think it's real, but then we have this right the last few period is just boom and we're there and That is exponential so think about your future as a content creator or as a publisher as a media company Is going to be exponentially different and the good news is this I've been in the media business doing media stuff Since 1995 I used to be a musician and producer Thankfully that was before the Internet so you can't find any of it But in any case Technology came along and disrupted everything music films television publishing financial Bitcoin Yeah, the story goes on but now in media. We're coming out of the valley of death The valley of death is the valley where we couldn't figure out the old system is dead. The new one isn't here yet We're coming out of that now There's a lot of reasons for that but the primary reason is mobile Because finally there is a mechanism to get to produce and now very soon to pay And also The mobile is personal. We're not going to accept the garbage and the junk from television Advertising on our mobile screen We're gonna have to be better than that So what happens here is clearly in a mind-boggling changes a Deloitte predicts a 62 billion dollar market for on-demand content I mean remember all the stories last year or a couple of years ago about how people just not not willing to pay for content, right? Don't believe it They will pay but it has to be absolutely Irresistible if Spotify would cost a pound a week or Better yet two pounds a month Would there be a single person who wouldn't have a service like this because then you could find all kinds of ways of paying for it And think about that for a second if the New York Times wasn't 350 dollars a year How many subscribers would they have? $20 a year 40 million subscribers Netflix is the sex story here, right? This is the number one story I think they are that actually that many people in Ireland who are subscribing only like 200k I think something like that but internationally speaking if The studios would give a license to Netflix anywhere these guys would have three four hundred five hundred million subscribers Talk about a willingness to buy for for value So what's very important what Richard said earlier, right? We're going from broadcasting To what I call broad banding Of course is that a so-called neologism? I made up this word but broad banding essentially means that what we're doing now is we're connecting to each other We're not just using a central place broadcasting isn't going away. It's merging with broad banding This is the biggest opportunity for all the big TV organizations private and public around the world, right? We're going from broadcasting to connecting a great quote From the new Chief digital officer of the White House. Well, what a title, huh wouldn't you like to have that chief digital officer, right? He says basically journalism is moving from broadcasting model to a connecting model And this is the success of social media, of course in parentheses success, right? But he says connecting involves an invitation to participate in something That is a killing proposition of broad banding that we can do that Of course not all the times all time You want to be connecting and giving a feedback on participating that's broadcasting, right? It's still going to be there the one way that you're going to need but in this world. We're talking about connectivity We're talking about as a creator is to create a ripple effect to make to create meaning Not to create noise. I mean a couple of years ago. It was enough to create noise on the web to be there Now you have to actually say something interesting In most Western countries we're much more concerned with meaning with with context with sense-making Then we are with it being free or cheap Mean this is the future of you know, how we're going to proceed in this direction Because now technology it's also rapidly changing our perception of reality You know that there's like 50 companies looking to out augment our vision Not Google glass, which is kind of on hold for the time being right but the Microsoft Holo lens Augmented reality the Oculus Rift. This is going to be the new mobile phone. In fact talking about external brains, right? That is a scary thought As a professor in 10 years, there will be very few left who are not going to wear a thing like this And in some ways it may be actually invisible So technology is changing our perception how we do it and of course all the interfaces are changing talking to your computer Star Trek That's here now. I do that now Of our things. I'm off my rocker You know when I talk to my computer giving it commands and looking for stuff, right? I actually dictate my emails now and You know in a few years will be easily possible to sit on your couch and say hey give me the scene from Colombo 1974 Where he drives over his dog or something right and boom it will play Mind-boggling those changes. What we're going to see here clearly is an interesting challenge and here on the left you see My current screensaver on my iPhone And why do I have this? Because you know this is so powerful. It's magnetic. It's addictive You can't get enough and the endorphins released to you when somebody likes what you do It's like a drug You can get this if you look for a screensaver on Mashable There was a big report about this being a popular screensaver, right and the other one I have you like even more I don't take a picture. I Figured you would take pictures. I put this in right and this is the other thing about technology I'm we're always talking about technology making us more open and connected and stuff really what it comes down to is We have to be able to digest to immerse to be human It is not human to constantly intake That's not about that's basically a hyperdrive mode. I mean basically Machine thinking That's not going to be our future. If you want to do that then become a robot Take vitamin pills or whatever Blow yourself up with information Feel like a superman with a mobile It's interesting. You know, this is really a there's a great word for this called hell then hell and heaven Right. I use a hashtag hell then for this. It could be heaven. It could be hell depending on which side you look at it but clearly Looking to the right side here, right is this going to be Human in the future to constantly receive and send That is my view not really human The future of content is going to be about this right meaningfulness sense-making contextual Immersive Emotional all the stuff that machines can't do at least for the next, you know, two years. They're just kidding 200 years That is the future of what we do as creators Automation is going to force us as this guy said in his book David pink Actually, not David Daniel pink any job that depends on routines is going to be automated away Many of your jobs if they depend on routines will be automated by software Your only way out is not to be software not to be the machine, right? The future belongs to a very different kind creators empathizes pattern recognizes meaning makers In fact, I would argue to you refused to be technology Use technology, but don't become technology. I mean, this is an interesting angle right, you know The providers of that technology all the big internet what's called been referred to as big content and big data companies They want us to become technology because it's not easier if we also became technology But that's not our path in the future The path in the future is going to be about what Kevin Kelly calls a visuality with is Z for some reason But you know, I just cut and paste from him But forgive me for that, but it's all about visuality if you're looking what's happening How many people are willing to pay for content right the top this is international? Research here showing the top is visual media Visual media is the future is going to be about 80% of what we have online and we're the takeoff point And interesting to see the money will always follow the eyeballs If you interested in money, you know for those that are just a tiny minority of you, I'm sure To follow the eyeballs if we look at this, you know looking at the graphs here I mean we can clearly see what's happening here You know how many people are you're watching video and what's happening with throughput and all that stuff the money follows Eyeballs and just a few days ago Facebook announced that you can in the future pay each other through Facebook That is the moment Where you can have subscribers That is the moment when people can say you know what I like your contributions. I like your videos. I like your posts I like your opinions. I'll put some money into the pot with one click And that's not not just gonna be Facebook. That's gonna be possible if you wear So that's actually one of the solutions. We're going to see in the future And then we have this convergence, you know, we used to think about these industries as being separate What they're not actually I They're all converging in one platform. That's mobile On the mobile you can take care of your health records and Transmit them you can do payments. You can watch content. You can broadcast you can publish you can do your banking You can get divorced on the mobile as well. There's 30 apps for that if you're so inclined And then we have this a rabbit not just not the rabbit abundance We have too much of everything There's a great book by Peter Diamantes, which a lot of things that he says I find strictly a Silicon Valley, California ideology, but He talks about abundance a book called abundance and so everything that happens around us is becoming abundant graph from Peter Saying that going with the singularity kind of idea right in 20 years will have abundance We have abundance of music today 60 million songs on Spotify Netflix Kindle Everything is becoming abundant and you guess what in the future Energy will be abundant We're going to solve their problem Abundance will be a global trend and then we're going to have to say well basically We have abundance outside, you know in terms of distribution and choices But scarcity is inside, you know inside meaning meaning context Whatever happiness right the purpose of life is not to accumulate more abundance But to find happiness in some way and that's what you do as a content owner to create that feeling of connectivity So basically what's happening here is forces us to shift our emphasis towards real true and in context experiences and That's our future as creators Real true in context experience even if they are in virtual reality they can still be real and true and to some degree at least Now a word of warning about people who are thinking about this right the so-called big data movement Using data to make everything completely transparent Data journalism, I think this is a good thing, right? Let's not get this wrong. It is a good thing but Ignorance is dangerous But so is desiring omniscience This is not going to be happening right if this was possible would be in deep trouble, right? We would live on space Odyssey and talk to hell if that was the case So let's look at data, but that's not necessarily require omniscience and That's in this book a whole new mind from ten years ago And he says abundance in the age of abundance appearing only to rational logical and functional needs is Insufficient and this was ten years ago. It's so much more true even today Mobile meaning mastery and I had to look for something with an M. So I pick men I hope you know what that means. I'm not yet a show you Jewish but still is a good word, right? So that is our direction meaning mastery not superficiality And this pyramid here from IBM shows where things are going and this di kw Pyramid we're going from data to wisdom to intelligence We're not going towards a pyramid to where we're going to be providing data and information only It's going to be about wisdom Intelligence all these things what what I call humor of them. Sorry was too quick on this one I have to come towards the end here But I will give you a couple more scenes to take home point number one in this world where a computer performance is beating human performance and Where we are at this point of takeoff, right and technology We're going to have to think about what that means. I think great stories will always be made with what I call humor rhythms not algorithms We will all use algorithms and technology But the future of what we do is about humor of them. It's a it's a it's not a yes or no. It's a continuum of technology and humanity It's about finding jobs that are above the API There's a great article about this in Forbes magazine, you know If you have a job that's below the API that means some sort of software is going to pull in information that you use to do You're dead In a couple years your job has to be above the API has to be at a place where the machine can say not Compete with you and that's going to be our future machines are for answers humans are for questions That is the really important thing about what we do is to ask questions I mean this this is what makes us human is to be able to do that the left brain, right? The task of the left brain will be increasingly done by machines Computing mathematics facts logic And we're moving towards the right brain. Of course in the end It's you know, it's really kind of both, you know the theory of theory of left and right pain to be completely different It's an old theory, of course They do actually interact and belong together But our skills in the future moving in this direction, right moving into a direction that allows us to do this I'll skip this quickly just a quick word on this How Facebook is changing journalism? I think we have to be extremely careful about what I call the secondary purpose Facebook wants to actually bring content into Facebook And I think it's questionable just to ask if we want to give content to companies that have a secondary purpose in life Which is to monetize and to get data Journalism isn't their reason. I have to wrap up. So I'll give you a brief summary of three important things expect exponential changes and opportunities Move above the API Above the line of where algorithms can do your job quiet the left brain. Don't quit it quiet it Broadcasting broadbanding connecting and humor events and Abundance outside scarcity inside. I'll leave you with a last quote from Alan Kaye the best way to predict the future is to create it Thanks very much for listening