Listen to the podcast from FuturePrint, where futurist Liselotte Lyngsø talks about predicting Brexit, the crisis of leadership, the importance of creativity and future trends.
Do you want to learn how to spot trends and translate the future into strategy, ideas and development for you and your organization?
Sign up for Future Navigators online or physical trendspotting masterclass!
In the future, companies will be able to inhibit bonuses or company cars through blockchain technology. This has the potential to significantly influence the transition to sustainable energy, but it also makes it inevitable to question the ethics of traceable money. How much should the state be able to interfere with our private lives and spending?
Futurist Liselotte Lyngsø predicts that our society will become highly precision-oriented in the future. Here, budget conversations and money talks will have a whole other focus, namely on how we can achieve the highest quality of life through our digital money.
Have you ever wondered how it affects our consumption that we no longer have to sign, enter a code or count physical money before we put things in the shopping cart? What does it mean for the insight into our finances that we pay with fingerprints, facial recognition, and other various forms of digital types of payment?
Futurist Liselotte Lyngsø states the uplifting message that the young gamer generation is full of geniuses when it comes to technology. They’ll have no trouble out how to navigate in a cashless society and they are already used to handling digital money in the gaming world.
And it is highly important that people have these skills, cause there are huge benefits to making future forms of payment methods digital. One is that it’ll become more difficult for organized crime to exist. Additionally, it has the potential to shut down the black economy completely. In Russia, it’s expected that it will earn the state 35% more in tax income if they start to monitor cash flows in real-time.
If we use new technologies such as blockchain, we will be able to nudge people to make more sustainable and green choices. Right now, 87 countries are working out how to implement more digital and smart money into their societies.
In Sweden, they talk about earmarking the money that parents get during their paternity and maternity leave, so that it won’t be spent on cigarettes and alcohol but only on sustainable baby stuff and healthy choices. The same goes for companies. They will be given the opportunity to nudge their employees to get electric cars through the company.
Liselotte Lyngsø has no doubt that the transition to sustainable energy will only go faster if we use technology and nudging. She even considers the possibility to put an expiration date on money. That way, we can make sure that it’s included in societal consumption. Then, if it isn’t used, it’ll be transferred back into the company or go to the state.
During the pandemic, restaurants and shops already started to phase out physical money. In the future, different types of biometrical payment methods where we pay with our bodies will take over.
We already use fingerprints and facial recognition, and at CBS in Copenhagen, Nets is working on a pilot project where you pay with your Dankort via blood vessel scanning in your finger. These technologies will be highly effective, especially for people who don’t have a back account.
“Laziness is the way forward. If you can just smile at the camera, this is the way to go. Then you quickly forget that you once had to stick your card in a machine and enter a code.”
Liselotte Lyngsø.
A possible downside to this is that it might become too easy. Suddenly, the waiting time that once made us reconsider large economical decisions such as loans, is cancelled. How should we manage that challenge?
In order for us to put digital payment into use, various apps have been and are developed all the time. The Airwallet from Odense is just one example. The company makes digital payment solutions for laundries, so you avoid the constant hassle of exchanging the right amount of coins.
In other countries, you typically use the same app – for example Chinese Alipay – for the vast majority of things. In Denmark, we have so many different apps that Liselotte Lyngsø even believes that the Danes have developed “app-ati”. We can’t stand any more apps. We’re tired of fumbling around frantically on the mobile to find the right app or the right customer club in a payment situation. Luckily, we’ll be able to avoid this in the near future.
Over the next five years, a Siri-like chatbot will listen in and automatically understand our needs and select the right app or loyalty card for the specific location and situation. We won’t have to type anything at all. It will work well in regard to payment, but chatbots who listen and decide what to propose also have a lot of power.
Nevertheless, we like to use new, digital payment methods because it is fast and convenient. In the same way, we are generous with our personal data if it can affect our health in a positive direction. A large amount of data available means that in the future, it will be easier to spot how we ensure a good economy. The old banks will be supplemented with a number of new players who are visually good at making us understand our economy.
This applies both in the form of influencers that you can reflect on and lean on, and other simulations of what you can achieve by acting in a certain way. Liselotte Lyngsø estimates that the banks that are most open to new ways of putting the economy into play are also the ones that will do best in the competition. It’s about translating data into advice on healthy finances.
“Suddenly, all these new dimensions come into our knowledge. You can fast-forward your finances, and you can follow developments both in what you want to buy, but also in what it will mean for your well-being.”
Liselotte Lyngsø.
In New Zealand, for example, they make well-being budgets. Here, they measure what people get out of their money.
For example, if they want to pay 500,000 kroner for a new knee, the well-being account with data from other people’s lives can tell us that it is not at all what makes us happy. Instead of surgery, go to the gym three times a week. Spend more time with your wife and get a dog you can walk with. It gives us completely different and much wiser budget conversations than we are used to. Conversations that are based on analyzes of enormous amounts of data, which have been greatly increased during the pandemic, where we needed data to be able to prevent the spread of infection.
In the future, we can also be greeted by our digital twin avatars in the bank. A twin who can help us spend our money right!
Maybe you want to work from home four days a week? Then your digital twin can tell you that you have to go into the office at least three days a week because otherwise, you get a feedback crisis and not a social affiliation with your colleagues. It goes far beyond just money.
Money will become digital, smart and multidimensional and much better at explaining value. The banks must utilize their knowledge so that they can make us wiser on how we make good investments in relation to being human. Both in the short and long term, because we as humans cannot see that for ourselves, says Liselotte Lyngsø.
This is already well advanced in China, where the digital currency, yuan, is well underway. It’s the central bank’s digital payment solution. It has no transaction fee and in the long run, it also works offline. However, it is traceable.
China wants to become the world’s leading state in terms of using artificial intelligence, algorithms, and data collection at the personal level. For example, they measured that some people did not get their night’s sleep because they were up gaming or binging movies all night. Therefore, they experimented with shutting down the power between 10 pm and 05 am in certain residential areas. After that, the employees came to work happy and profitable. After that, they’ve also decided that Chinese children can only play online for one hour a day, three days a week. It’s obvious that China makes some pretty wild investment decisions on behalf of the citizens.
Smart, digital, and traceable money, of course, raises a number of ethical questions about surveillance and privacy. How much should the state interfere in how we spend our money? In response, Liselotte Lyngsø sees the growing investment interest from private individuals as a good thing.
She explains how important it is that ordinary Danes start to have an attitude towards their investments. It can’t just be random pension companies that take care of it. And we will have more and more to say about the money field in the future. This makes the market more difficult to see through. We used to almost know exactly which algorithm the banks were thinking of. In the future, we will have more but smaller players in the field who are not necessarily logical-thinking but who are able to be emotional in their actions.
All in all, we are entering a new era. After the agricultural society, the industrial society and the information society, we are on our way to the precision society, where data becomes the decisive focal point.
The age of precision will be about making wiser choices. It’s silly that a car stays parked 90% of the time and fills up expensive areas. It is also foolish to put so much fertilizer in the fields that it sinks into the groundwater. Why invest in something short-term?
Liselotte Lyngsø predicts that we will become much smarter about how to invest. We will think back on 2021 and wonder: “how could we be that naive, believing that we could figure it all out ourselves?!”
Listen to Liselotte Lyngsø talk further about the precision age in this podcast.
Read or listen to the whole article from Erhverv+ in Danish.
Do you want to learn how to spot trends and translate the future into strategy, ideas and development for you and your organization?
Sign up for Future Navigators online or physical trendspotting masterclass!
This article is originally written by Eva Sylwester at The Age of Aquarius.
Host Jacy Nova joins futurist Liselotte Lyngsø, to look into the future of work, relationships and the metaverse.
Liselotte is likely to be one of the most inspiring and enthusiastic persons you will ever meet. Her ability to create powerful images and inspire people to align towards shared goals is mind-blowing. She will spin your head around and show you possibilities, that you never even dreamed of. Her big passion in life is to train people to visualize the future.
“I try to polish the window so decision-makers can decide to go with a clearer vision.”
Liselotte Lyngsø.
As a futurist, Liselotte tries to imagine what tomorrow will look like. For example, if the metaverse can change how we spend time with each other, it might also alter how we define our most significant relationships.
“Today, either you’re in a relationship, or you’re single. I think in the future, we’ll have a lot of different relationship categories rather than these two boxes that you can go in – either you are single, or you are settled.”
Liselotte Lyngsø.
Liselotte also noted a brewing social divide with the potential to grow perhaps even sharper than the chasm between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated: the time owners versus the time slaves.
“More and more people can decide where and how they want to work and when they want to work, they are the time owners, and then you have the time slaves – for instance, healthcare workers that have to be in a hospital at a given time.”
Liselotte Lyngsø.
Liselotte was careful to clarify the distinction between observing that something is likely to happen in the future and personally being in favor of that outcome.
“If you ask me as a private person, you will get my opinions as a mother of four or as a leader of my company. But, as a futurist, I try to stay apolitical, as neutral as possible.”
Liselotte Lyngsø.
However, Liselotte noted that we still have the power to shape our future and not be afraid of new technologies.
“When we talk about artificial intelligence, it repeats the patterns that we already have in society. So if we live in a biased society, we’re just going to get more of the same. So the important question that remains is what kind of society do we want to create for the future?”
Liselotte Lyngsø.
Listen Liselotte Lyngsø’s entire fascinating conversation with Jacy Nova right here.
Do you want to learn how to spot trends and translate the future into strategy, ideas and development for you and your organization?
Sign up for Future Navigators online or physical trendspotting masterclass!
What if your work could be as fun as a game? Wouldn’t it be much more motivation and exciting to go to work, if you knew you would be rewarded as you would in a game? If for every client you gained or product you sold, you would “reach a new level”? Think about it. Maybe you’re already playing!
On the second episode of OZY’s newest season of the podcast, The Future of X: The workplace, futurist Liselotte Lyngso joins the discussion of how gamification will change the way we work. On this episode, her co-experts are Mark Stevenson, Keisha Howard, Gene Farrell and James Canton.
“The future isn’t so abstract when it comes to gamification. It’s already all around us. Pilots hire gamers to become pilots, because they’ve basically already done the training.”
-Liselotte Lyngso.
Mark Stevenson is a futurist and the author of “An Optimist’s Tour of the Future” and one of his biggest worries about today’s work life is employee disengagement. He wonders why work isn’t enjoyable, when it’s such a significant part of our lives.
“The average employee is currently productive for about three to four hours a day. 85 percent of employees are disengaged with their work.”
-Mark Stevenson.
Maybe employee disengagement is a cause of habit. We’ve gotten so used to doing the things we do, and we’re not even sure why we do it anymore. Or maybe we don’t care, because our boss doesn’t give us high enough demands. No matter what causes this, something has to be done.
If you dislike your job, it’s most likely the way you have to perform your job, that you don’t like. According to Mark Stevenson, we can fight this by making the active replication enjoyable itself. An example of this is having sex. Society would say that we have sex because we enjoy it. But the biological explanation is actually that we have to reproduce ourselves. So, we would probably still do it, even if Mother Nature hadn’t made it enjoyable for us. It’s kind of the same thing with our work. Whether we like it or not, we have to do it in order to support ourselves. But doing a “Mother Nature” and making it more enjoyable would probably solve a lot of issues and enhance our productivity tremendously!
So how do we then make our jobs more fun? Mark Stevenson suggests gamification. This is something that Keisha Howard, the founder of Sugar Gamers, agrees strongly with. Her point is that human beings, kids, and animals intrinsically learn through play. And that gamification will have a positive influence on a lot of spectrums in our work lives.
“If we could quantify or qualify our work skills like in a game, or level up and earn points, it would motivate people in a whole new way. Maybe even give them a completely new platform to relate to one another.”
-Keisha Howard.
But gamification wouldn’t only be a way of motivating people to do their jobs. It might actually be the foundation of a whole new way of creating work teams. In a lot of video games, roleplay and choosing your own character is a big part of the game. The idea is to team up with players who have skills that you don’t. So, the characters might not be good at everything individually, but when they come together as a team, they can be a very powerful source. If we began to create work teams like we do in video games, it could revolutionize the whole team dynamic at the future workplace.
Today, we strike to perform perfectly every time and we’re really hard on ourselves if we don’t succeed. In gaming, everyone loses all the time. The point is exactly that you can only win when you’ve actually allowed yourself to lose all those times. Therefore, gamification might also create a whole new idea of what it means to lose.
How will democratizing problem solving influence future work life, and what might become some of the downsides to introducing gamification in future work life? Listen to the rest of the podcast with Liselotte Lyngso here, and find out.
Want to read more about the future workplace and work life? Check out these articles with Liselotte Lyngso.
MASTER THE ART OF TRENDSPOTTING
AND HOST YOUR OWN TREND MAPPING WORKSHOPS
Do you want to learn how to spot trends and translate the future into strategy, ideas and development for you and your organization?
Sign up for Future Navigators online or physical trendspotting masterclass!
How do we prepare for a future with driverless cars? Panel discussion on June 23. 2017 with reporter Ian Telfer.
Futurist Liselotte Lyngsø attended a panel discussion broadcasted on Radio New Zealand RNZ where the main focus was what a world with driverless cars is going to look like.
How will companies and countries prepare for the future, which is just around the corner? Driverless cars will be a significant changing factor for our view on technology. We have to be ready for achieving its full potential, by figuring out every detail that comes with it.
What opportunities will it bring us, and how will our society greet it? Can we redesign the vehicles in order to give the consumer the same feeling of control as if they were driving the car themselves? How will it affect people, that they won’t be able to, or won’t have to drive the car themselves?
Liselotte addresses co-driving as a possible scenario that is worth fighting for. Spontaneous co-driving in cars will allow os to expand our social lives. Suddenly, we’ll be able to make use of the time that we would normally use on driving alone from A to B. Driverless cars will allow us to catch up with friends, finish our last work meeting or connect with our families whilst being driven to our destinations. It will also create opportunity to socialize and network with a used-to-be stranger from our neighborhood.
“They don’t get road rage. They’re uniform and measured in their moral response. Maybe they’ll be better than we are.”
-Associate Professor, James Maclaurin.
Futurist Liselotte Lyngsø speaks about how we are going to make driving an online marketplace, like we’ve done with Airbnb. People will collect cars as a hobby. The public interest in nice designs, usability and the interest for the sexiness of the cars will continue to rise. People will expect to rent a car according to situation-based personal needs. Private car-ownership might be essential in order to ensure a continued flowering diversity within mobility.
The urgent and most important question to solve, is the question of who will be in control of mobility. As the driverless cars will be connected to the internet of things IOT – it could be at the national level, at the car manufactoring level or at the personal level. Listen to the broadcast and find out why we should integrate the driverless cars, and make up systems so that people will share and make it possible to reduce the numbers of cars on the road and eliminate the need for most of our current public transportation. You will also hear about how the driver-less future might be a target for new ways of hacking and terrorism that needs to be dealt with.
Listen to the panel discussion here, and imagine the road to driverless cars with motoring journalist David Thomson, Ass. Professor James Maclaurin, CEO of the Ministry of Transport Andrew Jackson and Futurist, Liselotte Lyngsø. On this link you can also read about the speakers on the panel.