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The future of personal finance

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GROUP 6

The Last....

This will be my last post in this blog in this course. It has actually been a great fun to blog so I might keep on doing it, but maybe for another purpose.

This will be a bit of a nostalgic post, the last post, the course is over…..It´s with split feelings when I say that the course is over. It has been a great course with loads of fun. None of the lectures were alike and it has been with excitement that I’ve entered the lectures.

The final presentations today were great. It started off with, I think, one of the best presentations, except ours (group 6, the future of personal finance). The first group had made a great video. The fun thing was that all the presentations were very different in their ways. The biggest laughter was when a group showed a picture of Magnus looking like Borat. I won’t describe in detail what all the presentations were about, I will just say that the evening was really great, all groups had done a great job, some better than others.

I really hope that people will look at our blog after the class especially Magnus, because that´s were all the great information is. The videos that we showed in class were only previews of what our blog contains. Our presentation in class yesterday was only a presentation of the presentation. So, like I said, I really hope that people and especially the jury and Magnus are interested enough to spend some time scrolling around our blog, it´s really good and interesting. I also hope that we dazzled Magnus enough with our presentation.

I would like to end with giving a big big thank you to Magnus Lindkvist for making this course possible and making it so fun. Also a big big thank you to Caroline, who has been great all ten weeks. She´s a lifesaver….

Like I said I’m sorry to say that this course is over…..

That´s all for now and unfortunately for ever…..

I´d like to end with repeating what the chines girl Anna said in our film, A M A Z I N G….

Parking houses...

Yesterday evening I was watching I robot on TV3. It´s a futuristic movie about robots, where one is a bit different from the others. This special one can feel anger and other human things which lead to it getting a suspect in a murder. This blog post isn´t about the plot of the movie, it´s about different interesting things that I saw in the movie, especially a type of parking house. It would be great for the cities if they could offer more parking spaces, and if we could offer them in a way where they don´t need much space then we could build more apartments in the central city and so on.


The type of parking house that I saw in the movie was a kind of robotic parking house. You just park your car outside the parking house and a big claw takes the car and puts it in a free space, but with the front down. This is a kind of space optimization. This kind of parking house could be build underground. This kind would be great central in big cities, for example in Stockholm. If we could build the NK parking house underground with this space optimization method then we could have more stores or more apartments in the central of Stockholm.

I have actually seen a parking house in Vasastan that uses a similar method. It´s not underground and it doesn´t space optimize like the I robot one, but it´s similar in the way that you just park your car in the entrance and then just press a button and your car will be placed automatically.

A thoughtful thing to think about, how we can develop smarter and more spaced optimized parking houses.

That´s all for now….

The future of downloading.....

This is a subject that I have to talk about. The question is how will it look in the future, will we still be downloading? Do we need to download? Will it be legal to download? These are all good questions that I don’t have an answer to.

If we look back, downloading has existed nearly as long as the internet has “lived”. But it has escalated throughout the years. More and more sites have popped up on the net. But is has developed into a more and more legal problem. The music writers and artists wants to get paid for their work, the film writers and studios also wants to get paid. The problem here is that the new sites that have developed have this new system that makes it hard for the authorities to catch the downloader’s. A question here is if this will escalate? Will we have more charges on people who download? Will downloader’s face jail time?

I think that it will be impossible to stop all the downloader´s. The solution will be that they will meet half way. There is a solution on the idea stage. The idea is that when you buy your internet contract you choose if you want to download or not. If you say yes, then you choose how much you want to download, suppose you have three alternatives there. Then you pay a specific sum of money each month and you can download legal thereafter. The money will then be divided fairly to all the artist and screen writers and so on. The more they get downloaded the more percentage they will get. If you choose not to download then you will give the internet company the full power to check that you don´t download, and If you do, then you will be punished. This is a very good solution. The downloader´s can download with good conscious and the music and film companies will get some money. The companies have to think that it´s better than nothing, because today they don´t get anything from the downloader´s.

The downloading itself will be more and more accepted and it will be more and more used. Today people download everything from programs to television shows. Today you can even rent movies on the net, by just paying a sum of money, this means that you don´t need to go to the video store, you can just sit at home and rent your favorite movie, this means that your movie will always be in stock. This is not the same as the downloading that I talked about before, but it shows that more sites wants to use the escalation of downloading. But the big downloader’s don´t rent movies, they just download it without paying anything, and that´s where the idea that I talked about before enters…

A thought that I have is that we maybe will be able to download directly on the TV, the future televisions will either have a built in computer in them or they will be directly connected to the computer. So instead of choosing channel you can choose whatever movie or series you want to watch.

That´s all for now from my thought about downloading…..

Another way to use your phone...

With this you play retro games on a jumbotrone with your phone. "The essential appeal is audience participation on a massive scale". The megaphone is another example of harnessing cell phones to enhance a marketing effort. I´ll let the pictures and video speak for itself....

http://www.playmegaphone.com

That´s it for today......

The end of travel angency shops?....

Today I visited some travel agencies to book a trip. In the first agency that I visited I found a lot of catalogues that you could pick and take home. But when I reached the second one, there they didn´t have any, the only thing they had was a smaller version of the real catalogue where they had picked their favorites. This made me think. Is this the next step, no catalogues and only internet?

If we look back, we had no internet and only travel agencies with a lot of catalogues but after time has passed by, internet has gotten bigger and bigger. More and more people have gotten used to order their trip on the internet. They have even gotten used to paying their trip on the net. There are seldom people in the travel agency shops, most people sit at home and choose their trip. Today we have travel agencies that only occur on the net.

So where is this heading? he people who visit the travel agencies are mostly old people who don´t rely on the net. What are they going to do if the agency shops disappear? Will they disappear?

I think they will, but at the same time I think that the internet will be easier to use. Today you can apply to internet courses for old people so it´s getting more and more accepted by everyone.

This was just a short spontaneous post…..

Now it´s time to have a Friday beer……

Last but not least....

Last night we had our last guest lecturer and I must admit, it was one of the best and the most fun presentation. Why did I think that, well because I´m a gadget nerd and Sven talked a lot about gadgets in the future. He showed us a lot of cool things that will come. For example the virtual reality games in real life, the GPS soccer game was really cool.

At first he started to talk about what micro trends are and what they should involve. Micro trends are small changes cases of changes and they have to have four things, they have to be eye-catching, new, intelligent and structural change. That led to the next topic, the 5th screen. Nobody knows what the 5th screen will be, but there are a lot of guesses out there. To clarify, the first screen is the cinema, the second is the television, the third is the pc and the fourth is the mobile phone, but what will the fifth be…..

My guesses of the 5th screen are maybe something with our eyes, like the lens that Sven talked about. A lens that can zoom in stuff and get information from people that you zoom in. It will also have a night vision.

Sven also talked about some things that will reach the internet soon. The new search engines, you will be able to search with pictures instead of words. Also if you see a cool watch in an ad, then you can just copy that picture and print it in the search engine and you will get all prizes of the watch, you will even get cheaper alternatives and where you can buy them. The next thing will be to combine internet series with the search engine, So for example, if you´re sitting and watching entourage and you think that Vincent Chase has really cool shoes, then you can just press the menu and choose his shoes , and you can instantly buy the shoes. This sounded really cool and useful and I think it will reach us very soon. That will be a new big trend in on the internet.

Another interesting thing that Sven talked about is the future of the cell phone. The phone will be a gadget that will control everything, well not everything, but the electronics in the home, the car and a lot of more things.

So, will just have to wait and see if Sven’s guesses will be true….

One thing that´s true, is that the presentation was very interesting and giving…That´s all for now….

An interactive bar.....

Will this be a new trend? A was reading a newspaper where I saw this interactive bar. It looks really cool and I think it´s something that can come in handy in the future. You don´t have to wait for the staff to help you. You just press on the screen what drink you want, then you just place your card on top of the screen and the deal is finished, then you just have to wait for your drink. This doesn´t take away any jobs and you can order whenever you are ready, you don´t need to be disturb by the waitress any more asking if you want something to drink. The downside is, if the waitress is pretty, then you will see less of her with this new system, but I can we can manage that….

The guys who invented this thing are hoping that it will reach the bars as soon as forthcoming summer…. So keep your eyes open for this new invention….

That´s all for now…

Here´s another example of an interactive bar

The future of cellular phones.....

The future of cellular phones, will there even be a future containing cell phones? Like I posted in an earlier post, everything is getting smaller and that contains the cellular phone business as well, but I think that we have entered a new era in the cell phone industry. I remember when Ericsson released their Ercisson hotline phone, it was black with orange buttons and it was very, very big. After the years have gone by, the cell phones have gotten smaller and smaller, with more and more gadgets and in them. We have gone from enormous phones to small ones, from black and white screens to color screens, from only being able to print in your number to small personal computers, the development have gone by very fast. But now I believe that we have entered a new era.

The cell phones have gotten bigger again, I mean look at the iphone and compare that one to Nokias smallest one. The big difference is that we have entered a new trend where the phones are all getting touch screens. The result of that is that the phones can´t be too small. So where are we heading. Will the phones keep on going getting bigger or will the small phones return, will we like I said even have any cell phones?

I think that we will always have cell phones, but that it will go in a two way direction. One way will be cell phones that are in a quite normal size, like the iphone, that will contain enormously many gadgets and stuff, and one direction where the phones will be as small as the Bluetooth headsets. I also think that the future phones will contain many more things than the phones we have today. The phones will be like a computer. That we have today but a think that we will be able to do all the things that we can do in the computer. Maybe we will have a combined phone and paying system. We might be able to pay with our phone, and maybe be able to do money transfers.

Maybe we can have Bluetooth headsets that can connect with your phone from a long distance, for example, when you´re going to town for some shopping and you don´t want to carry your phone with you, then you can leave the phone at home and only bring the Bluetooth headset with you which can connect to your phone at home. There are a lot of maybe´s, we can never now what will happen, but some predictions won’t hurt……

That´s all for now….

Four wheelers.....

Yesterday when I was at work I heard something driving past outside the store. At the same time my colleague opens his mouth and said “I hate this new trend with these four wheel motorcycles”. At the same time as he said the word trend my attentions switch fully to him. When I came home I made some searches on the net to see what he was talking about. Last year a new trend started in the vehicle industry. After the European Union changed their by-laws on motor driven vehicles, the sales of four wheel drive vehicles have risen. The reason is that these are allowed to be driven on public roads. But the drawback is the increase of casualties. However, a new trend has started, the question is, when will it end, and what will replace it. The only thing I hope for is, that it´s something safer.

That´s all for now....

Wall-E

On Thursday evening I had the privilege to be invited by Magnus Lindqvist and the SSES to see Wall-E on the Sergel cinema. I would like to start with saying Thank you” to Magnus and the SSES for the movie. I think everyone enjoyed the movie. A thing that many people don’t know about me is that I love Disney movies. Last summer, my 26 year old friend and I had a Disney day, where we watched 5 Disney movies in a row. I really enjoyed this movie. I´m not going to explain the whole movie, but I will try to link the trailer.

The movie gives a very interesting thought of how the future might look like. Will we have garbage overload, will we get food in cups, and will we be able to take vacations in space. One big question that I asked myself when I was watching the movie is, will we ever be able to live in space? I did some reading about this and the answer is that it´s possible but it will cost too much. The problem is also that for example Mars is more hostile than a climate change would be for us on earth. We also don´t have the resources to move a big bunch of people to Mars. The predictions are though that in the future we will have some research stations on mars, but it will take over 100 years if ever that we can live on Mars. Maybe Wall-E can use Mars to dump all his garbage……

Eva……Wall-E…….

The future of health centers......

Today I needed some exercise, so I went down to the gym and had a nice workout. When I was standing on the treadmill looking at the television that belonged to my treadmill, I started, like always, thinking about the future, and how the health centers will look like in the future. Will we even have any health centers in the future or do we just need to take a pill and we will directly feel healthy and look like body builders? I mean legal pills, not the ones we have today.

So let´s look back in time and see how health centers has developed the last couple of years. At first, the gyms were only for body building. When you thought of a gym you directly connected it to a dark studio where big muscled guys were standing lifting their heavy weights. After time health centers have gotten more and more accepted. People realized that you don´t need to be a body builder to be accepted at a health center. When health centers got accepted more people went to the health centers, but not only to lift weights but to exercise. Then after a while the health centers started different group programs, like step aerobics and spinning and so on. When you go to the health center today, the most people go to the programs or the relax section, less people go to the actual body building section.

What´s next then…. I think the health centers will be very high-tech in the future. I mean look at the health centers today. All the treadmills at my health center have its own television. In my sisters health center in Switzerland you have a card which you put in every machine that you want to use and it will automatically adjust the weight that you have pre chosen. The development of health centers are heading towards a high-tech era, even though it feels like we already entered it. It´s very hard to spot what will come in the future, but I think that the machines will be easier to use. With this I mean that you don´t have to put as much effort as you do today, the machines will help you train your muscles in a more efficient way.

I think that we are heading to health centers where we have machines that do the work for us. For example the thing they have on TV shop that you strap around your stomach and that gives you electric shocks or something. Those electric shocks in 5 minutes are supposed to represent 100 sit-ups. We also have a kind of vibrating machine that you can stand on or lie down on and do different exercises. The good thing about these is that the vibrating part does the work for you, but like my mom said, it has to be fun.

Another thought is that the food section has developed much healthier food which results in that we don´t need to go to the gym. Or maybe we have a bed that makes the body work in peculiar way in the night that we don´t feel that can result in that we don´t have to go to the gym. Or maybe a chair that we have in our home that serves the same purpose as the bed.

So to summarize. I think we are heading to a more high-tech era. We are in one now, but it will develop more and more for every day. We are also heading to a future where we don´t have to do the work ourselves…..

That´s all for now….

Mr.Ronald Jones

I just have to make a small post about Thursdays lecture. The lecture was held by a well dressed professor named Ronald Jones. He talked about trends and the future in education and design. The most interesting thing that he said was that we are heading to a trend where we don´t buy for example a chair for its design itself, we buy the chair for the experience of the design. He also mentioned the importance development of designers in the business area. Today many companies hire designers but not for their skills but for their ability to create something unconventional.

He had many interesting thoughts and I thought that this was a very good and giving lecture, go Donald.

That´s all for now....

PiersSilentFawkesKing.....

I want to start with saying thanks to SSES and Magnus Lindkvist for giving us the opportunity to listen to Piers Fawkes. I also want to say thanks for the food and drinksJ. Piers Fawkes presentation was very inspiring, it was, with no doubt, the best presentation so far. I liked the way that he sounded professional and somehow like an idol but at the same time very down to earth and humble.

The most interesting part they he talked about and that also Kristian Cheng talked about was that you have to make the information digestible. You have to make it nice and interesting for people to read and not just a lot of data that says nothing. Some companies pay an amount every month to get all kind of trend data, but the problem is that they never use and that´s where Piers comes in the picture and makes it better and more digestible. He raps it all together in a nice package, this makes it all easier for the companies to read and to adept the trend to their company.

Another interesting thing was when he talked about communities and the effect on trends. A trend is nothing until a lot of people assemble around that trend. That’s when it reaches the communities and when the communities assemble around it, then it might become a trend, and when a lot of communities assemble around it, then it might have become a mega trend.

His passion for his work amazed me. He said that he woke up every morning at six in the morning and starts every morning with reading loads and loads of RSS links. His main aim is to give people and companies inspiration.

I would like the end this post with once again giving a big thank you to SSES and to Magnus Lindkvist. It was a very well spent two hours yesterday!

Now it´s time to have a nice after work !

Park(ing)

I just had to post this. Once again I was looking through PSFK blog. I found this really cool post about Park(ing). It´s one day celebration where participants reclaim the parking spaces to create small but engaging public spaces.

“As long as you put money in the parking meter, the space is yours, you can do whatever you want”

I think it´s a great idea, but it might be a bit dangerous….but it´s something that can be elaborated….

Now I´m really looking forward to tonights guest lecture......(PSFK)

That´s all for now....

“The most expensive spy is always cheaper than the poorest army”

Today we had a very interesting guest lecturer, her name was Kristina Cheng and she works as a professional trend spotter. It was very interesting to hear her thoughts about trend spotting and her work. Her presentation itself was very interesting, but I think it was the questions afterwards that interested me the most. One interesting question was when a guy asked her how she finds the trends. Her answer to that was that she reads a lot of books, she travels a lot, goes to a lot of restaurant, but the most important thing is not just to gather information but to convert it to something that a specific company can use. When you can do that you will get your clients, just predicting trends is not that useful but the second that you can convert them you will be successful.

The second question was about what she tells her clients when she finishes her reports, does she tell the client that this is going to happen or does she tell them this, or that might happen. To answer that she said that she gives them the information and for it to be a trend the company has to go at it, or sometimes they won’t go at it and it stills become a trend or sometimes they go at it and it doesn´t become a trend. The important thing is that the company has to make an important choice and that is choose if they are going to believe the report they have in their hands and to decide if they should go at it, and hopefully in most cases, maybe go all in. She also pointed out that this work is a lot about stomach knowledge. You can never know for sure what´s going to happen in the future, but you can do what you can to predict it and combine that with stomach knowledge and you will get Kristina’s work.

You could tell that Kristina enjoyed her work and I must say it sounded like a very fun and interesting job. So who knows, maybe in a couple of years I work on my own trend spotting firm……

Schools get in the game....

As I mentioned before I have a weak spot for video games. I was looking through PSFK when I found this interesting post about schools using video games for education. Like it says in the blogg, games are an easy acess point, where school work can meet kids in a space that they already enjoy playing in.

“If you, as a teacher, are satisfied with engaging only 15 percent of your students, then you’re failing the majority,” says Mr. Dubbels. “The big idea is to identify what students are already invested in, and that’s videogames.”

Today, less than 1 percent of the schools teach through video games. I think this number will rise throughtout the years. It all comes down to reaching the kids, and video games will definitely reach the kids. I mean try giving a kid a book with math problems and a video game with the same math problems, what will he choose? No doubt about it, he will definitely choose the video game, so why make it harder than it is. Use the gadgets that the kids love to make the education fun and I promise you that you will se results. I won´t be surprised if the 1 procent has risen to 10 procent in the next 5 years.

That´s all for now!

Serendipity..........

Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely.

What will happen in the future and what path your life will take is all up to serendipity, fate and coincidences. A couple of days ago I watched the movie “Sliding Doors” with Gwyneth Palthrow as lead actress. This movie is divided into two stories. The first one is about when she manages to catch the subway on time and manages to come early which results in catching her husband in bed with another lady. That story continues with her life after being cheated. The other story starts in the same way as the first one, she is trying to catch the subway but in this one she misses it by a second or two and when she comes home her husband’s mistress has left the building so she doesn´t know what had happen. The story continues with her life, where she at the time doesn´t know that she´s been cheated at. The plot of the movie is that it takes just a second to completely change your life and the path of your future.

This is a very interesting movie and it really makes you think. Just a second of your life can change your future entirely. Like in this movie, she was just a second away when she missed the subway and it change her whole life and her future took another direction. I think that this is why it´s so hard to predict the future, especially if your going to predict your own personal future. It´s easier to predict trends with this I don´t mean that it´s easy to predict trends I just mean that it´s easier than predicting your own personal future. I think the problem is still the same, I doesn´t matter if we are predicting our personal future or a big trend, what lies in the future is like I said before all up to serendipity, fate and coincidences.

That´s all from my thoughts from the movie “Sliding Doors”!

Ps, I can strongly recommend the movie!

The importance of the group….

The modern society is very dependent on communities. The retail companies are very dependent on brand communities. Group pressure has gotten a bigger and bigger importance throughout the years, which is both good and bad. Yesterday’s guest lecturer Katarina Graffman talked a bit about group pressure and how important it is for the companies to build brand communities.

I want to talk a bit about the change in the importance of wearing the correct brand and that it´s a result from the escalation of group pressure. When I travel 10 years back in my mind I don´t see everyone in school walking around in designer clothes like they do today. Today fashion is a very big industry but ten years ago it was important but not even close to the importance we have today. We had a lot of group pressure 10 years ago but I feel that it has escalated since then. If you visit a high school today, I can bet that most of the students are well aware of what they are wearing and what brand it is. So, we have to ask ourselves the question, where does this development come from, could we predict this coming?!

The answer to this question lies in the escalation of group pressure and brand communities. So if we should blame someone we should blame the big retail companies and their way of advertising. The big thieves are for example Nike, Ralph Lauren, Apple…and so on….and so on….Today you can get bullied if you wear the wrong brand or listen to the wrong music. I bet that the group pressures in the schools today are very high, I would say higher than ever. Is it a problem? How should we deal with it? What will happen in the future?

My first answer would be that it might be a problem in the lower ages, but I think it´s under control. So, what about the future? My first spontaneous guess would be that this will be escalating. People commit more and more to brands and connect to their communities and I think that these will get bigger and more important. To be faithful to your brand becomes more and more important and will keep going that way. The companies know this and are very smart in the way they advertise and build their communities. So, we are heading into a future where the brand that you are wearing will tell the audience a lot about you. It will also help you connect to people without needing to say a word. With just looking at each other for one second, you will know directly if you have something in common.

To summarize I would say that the future involves stronger brand commitment and bigger brand communities!

I hope these thoughts made some sense!

That´s all for today!

"The problem with the future is that it keeps becoming the present"

1. "Any useful idea about the future should appear to be ridiculous." (Jim Dator)
2. "Take hold of the future or the future will take hold of you." (Patrick Dixon)
3. "The future is clear to me. What I don't understand is the present." (Gerhard Kocher)
4. "There are no future facts." (Fred Polak)
5. "A part of our future appears to be evolutionary and unpredictable, and another part looks developmental and predictable. Our challenge is to invent the first and discover the second." (John Smart)
6. "The problem with the future is that it keeps becoming the present." (Calvin)

I was searching the net and found some very interesting quotes about the future…..

Quote 1: When someone comes up with an idea about the future the responses are always “is he alright”, “whats wrong with him” but it often the most ridiculous ideas that are the correct ones or closest to be the correct ones.

Quote 2: This goes hand in hand with what I´ve been talking about before. We must take hold of the future; we must take control and have control of what we develop. For example the development of computers. We have to make sure that we develop them in the right way, so that they don´t take hold of us in the future or like I said before so that they don´t take to many jobs from us.

Quote 4: That’s very true, there are no future facts, we can only guess and predict. We can do good predictions and good guesses but we can never be 100 % sure and that´s the beauty of the future.

Quote 6: I think that´s the best quote. We reach the future everyday and yet we have far to go to reach the future...(I promise, I´m sober J ). Time passes by very fast and It´s true that every second that passes by makes us reach a step in the future, but still there is a lot more to reach.

So, how should we handle the future….the only answer to that is to live today, enjoy the life that you have right now and handle the future when it reaches you. And last but not least, don´t take anything for granted, like I said the future reaches you every second and you don´t know what it contains.

That´s all from my philosophy side of my brain today……!

The Foresight Group....

Last night’s guest lecture was very interesting in many aspects. The surrounding we sat in was very cozy and relaxed which was a nice change till all the classic lecture halls. When Björn Larsson started to talk he felt very fatherly. He had a nice and humble voice and really reached out to all the students in the class. He started to give us an assignment which contained that we had to search our sole for the last big change we had in our live. That was a very odd thing to do in an entrepreneurship course, but the content was reached. He summarized it all with saying, if you are looking for a change or need a change then you should think of the last time you had a change and try to find the foundation of that last change to reach a new change.

The next speaker was Fredrik Karlsson who is the CEO of a company called Twitch Health Capital. He said two very fun and interesting things. He said that there are two special occasions where we decide to make a change, New Years Eve and on Sundays :). There is a gym in Stockholm that sells their most membership cards within six weeks after New Year’s Eve. He also mentioned that the average member goes to the gym four times a year, no wonder that the gyms give monthly payment plans.

The most thoughtful thing he said was…

“If you’re going to have a personal change then you need to prepare, don´t rush it”

That´s something I think you should have in mind when entering the future. We should take it easy, we should take the time we need when we want to do our changes, we should think one extra time before we act. If we do this, I think we will enter a more safe and adaptive future.

Gustaf Delin (co-founder of The Foresight Group) had a nice comment as well….

“Why make it simple when you can complicate it beautifully”

Last but not least I have to mention the last ten minutes of the lecture. It felt like we were touching the future when Björn called his associate in Capetown (?) in South Africa and allowed him to give a short speech and answer some questions via Skype. I have never had a lecture before where the speaker was sitting in another continent. Is this the future, well no, because it has already happened. But what should we expect in the future. Will all the teachers sit at home and deliver their lectures, or will we sit at home and listened to the lectures, or will there only be one big university in the entire world who gathers the best teachers and gives lectures to the students on their computers? I mean, imagine that you can sit in Stockholm and still go to Harvard or Yale, wouldn´t that be great?! That´s something to think about, how will the school system be in the future, how will the schools look like in the future and how will the lectures be in the future…..??!!

A spontaneous answer would be that it will stay the same for a long time. This is such a big institution that would need a lot of strong factors to make a change. On the other hand I do believe that lectures through the internet will become more and more popular and I also think that maybe in the future you will be able to attend any school in the world by just sitting at home pressing the keyboard on your computer, but who knows???!!!!....

That´s all for today…..

The Child Within.....

I have a confession to make. Even though I´m 26 years old I still have a passion for video games, and that passion will never go away. You can never get to old for video games. I was sitting at home with my friends on Friday evening playing my latest purchased video game console called Nintendo Wii. When I was playing this new game a started to think about trendspotting & Future thinking. This Nintendo Wii is a new and revolutionary game. It ´s revolutionary because of the way you play the game. You have a sensor bar on top of your TV that connects with the sensor bar on each of the controllers. Instead of just sitting down in the sofa and pressing some buttons you have to do the movement by yourself that you want your guy on the TV to do. So in other words, if you want your guy to swing the golf club you will have to do a full swing yourself, then the sensor bar senses how you swing the club, and "voila" your guy makes the exact swing. This is the first game that contains this kind of motion sensitive controller. This made me thinking about how fast the video game development is going and made me wonder where we are heading.

The first video games reached the markets in the late 70`s and early 80`s. They were very simple but still big. I mean look at the fist Nintendo console. The console was a big box, the games were as big as a DVD cover and the controllers were attached with a cord and they had 2 main buttons and two extra buttons and a steering button on the left hand side. It was very simple back then, the graphics were very bad but at that time it felt revolutionary. After the years have gone by the video game development has exploded. There are many actors on the market that are competing over the customers, this forces the companies to invest more and more money in the development section to keep up the pace with the other companies.

So, what´s the next step in the video game era….?

Predicting the future is never easy, especially not in this fast-paced world of video games. But I´m going to make an attempt. Nintendo Wii is a kind of trend that has started in the video game industry. But you can say that there are two trends that have started. One of them is the motion sensitive controller that has opened up gaming for people who wouldn´t normally play videogames and the other one are the mainstream mature games. Quiz games for grown up people, music games that both kids and grownups can play. These two trends will last a while.

Another thing that keeps getting bigger and that also opens up gaming for new people are the low-commitment games. These are games where you don´t have to read a 30-page manual. You can spot this in the Nintendo Wii, where they have a retro section where you can download old games to your new Wii. You can for example download Ice Climber that was released in the early 80´s that was very popular and easy to play. I think that the future will contain more and more games where you can “feel” the game and where you can “move” realistic to it.

The future will also contain a bigger network where you don´t have to invite your friends to your home to play against them, instead you will for example only need to connect to facebook or something to play against them. This is something that exists today, but I think it will get bigger and better. Last but not least, I think that all the games will disappear. That sounds very bold, but what I mean is that in the future I think that instead of going to the store to buy I game you just pay directly online and download the game.

That´s all for now!