Andrew Curry writes:
I was asked to speak at an event held last week in Leuven in Belgium on The Future of Transport by Said El Khadraoui, an MEP who’s a member of the European Parliament’s Committee on Transport and Tourism. I went because it was a chance to revisit a large scenarios project I directed a few years ago, for the UK government’s Foresight project, on Intelligent Infrastructure Systems, and because some of the other speakers were at the forefront of work on intelligent transport systems. (And not, of course, because Leuven is the home of Stella Artois).

Transport is a problem because its carbon emissions keep on growing – unlike every other sector – and because it is almost completely dependent on fossil fuel to power it, against a backdrop of expected long-term price increases. One speaker argued that given the carbon impact and the risks, and given also the level of external costs generated by transport, it is likely that transport – especially car use and road freight – is simply too cheap.

The argument which I teased out of the Foresight scenarios was that one of the problems is that we confuse the benefits of mobility with the benefits of access; a century of increasing car use has made services and facilities more distant, and therefore harder to access by anything other than a car. The long-run solution is to redesign the built environment to reverse this process. This takes a generation or more, although it is starting to happen; there are more food shops closer to homes, and road space, certainly in towns, is being taken away from cars across Europe.

In the meantime, technology offers both carrots and sticks. The combination of wireless technology, open data, and smartphones opens up the possibility of applications which make public transport more attractive, and alternatives to car ownership more feasible. This requires more than just better, live information. It also requires the smartphone or a smartcard to be a form of authentication (not necessarily identification), of permission, and preferably of payment as well. The stick is some form of road pricing; the technology is well advanced, and the reasons for implementing it more pressing. The Netherlands is likely to be the first, although Belgium is not far behind. One other issue that’s becoming more prominent is that of the noise impact of traffic.

Leuven is a university town with quite a lot of industry associated with it (a Belgian equivalent of Oxford, perhaps). One of the speakers conjured up a vision of the city using technology to manage its transport issues better – everything from guiding traffic and managing traffic flows, to a drivers’ reserved parking space, to integrating information about different transport systems, to supporting car sharing, to helping people use bikes or walking instead of travelling by car.

The picture at the top, by Andrew Curry, is of the Grote Markt in Leuven, a ‘shared space‘ used by pedestrians, cyclists, and service vehicles. It is published here under a Creative Commons licence.

Crawford Hollingworth writes:

We’ve been doing quite a lot of work in Latin America in recent years, and it seemed both inevitable and desirable that we’d want to open an office on the continent, not least because – in terms of social change – it’s one of the most innovative regions on the planet. And we’ve now managed to do this – working in partnership with Ogilvy in Buenos Aires. We’ve been lucky to find two outstanding people to launch the office for us, in Bernardo Geogheghan and Sebastian Codeseiro, who’re flanking me in the picture above.

I visited Buenos Aires for the launch, and while I was there I was interviewed by Clarin, Argentina’s largest paper. Here’s part of the interview – approximately translated.

- What emerging trends are we seeing?

“One of the trends that we analyze is that people feel that we live in a society which has greater risks than at other times. The way this risk emerges in each society is different. In Europe is related to the fear of others, the immigrant, and also with the possibility of a new economic crisis. In the U.S. it is the risk associated with the possibility of terrorist attacks. In Latin America it has other components linked to problems such as poverty and insecurity of property and people. In each area the trend is expressed differently.

- What other phenomenon can be anticipated for the coming years?

I think the one of the most important trends is the rise of protectionism in many forms and at many levels – national to regional and even at a city level [imagine a sort of new medievalism in which cities only care for, support and protect themselves].  This will be brought about by growing global and local power struggles, resource issues and social unrest.

We’ve been having a debate in the office about the merits of Wordle. These are Russ’ thoughts.

Russ Wilson writes:

Wordle, word clouds, Tagxedo:  all online apps for taking a load of data in the form of words and presenting it in a design friendly way.  As a lover of language I’m all for anything that encourages people to explore words, think about how and why they’ve been used and analyse their meanings. However I’m not really sure that any of these tools do this.

I have two main issues with Wordles, and they’re exemplified in the wordle above, based on David Cameron’s coalition speech. First, they remove the word from its immediate context.  Take the word interest, represented as one of the more frequently occurring words.  But it could equally indicate curiosity and engagement or interest payments. The Wordle doesn’t help; it only tells us the word occurred often in the speech. Similarly, coalition also figures prominently. But it doesn’t help with context. We can’t tell, for  example, whether they said ‘this is a coalition’ or ‘this is not a coalition’!

The second issue is that frequency is being proposed as an indicator of importance, but that’s not how we actually interpret speech. Imagine a Wordle which captures responses to a question such as ‘What do you think of the coalition?’ One person might say the new government is ‘absolutely the most important and exciting change in politics in living memory’; others might respond that it is ‘quite troubling’, ‘not very troubling’ or even ‘not troubling’?  The Wordle would look, well, troubling:

Frequency of use is simply that – frequency of use.

Wordles do look good. But they become dangerous when presented as meaningful analysis. They don’t tell the right story, and worse, they are also capable of telling a completely different story altogether. Yet the mainstream media are happy to present them as semi-serious analysis: The Guardian says that from its Wordles for Nick Clegg and David Cameron’s acceptance speeches ‘you can get a good idea of the two leaders’ use of language – and which words were important to them’.  As a linguist I know there are many ways to explore their language use, but I don’t think I would include a Wordle as a method of analysis or of display. Their visual appeal gives them more credence than they deserve.

As a final test, here is a Wordle of this post – do you think it reflects the views I’ve expressed above?

The industry for personal informatics is certainly one to watch. There’s even been talk of a ‘movement’ and unsurprisingly, the iPhone has spawned a host of personal informatics applications. These applications are tantamount to an omphaloskeptics’s dream: pretty much any variable of life can be tracked to the most granular degree. Users of personal informatics sites can log everything from vegetables consumed and number of migraines suffered to variations in mood and their feelings about particular places.

Perhaps evidence that consumers are seeking certainty in these uncertain times, the sheer number and variety of personal informatics applications suggests not only a rising interest in self-analysis (or an increasingly narcissistic society) but a desire for more control over one’s personal life. For starters, these tools help you to learn from the past and plan for the future – if you ate too many calories this week, you know exactly how many to remove from your diet next week. However, much of the allure of personal informatics lies in the visualisations these sites can produce with the raw data. Sites such as your.flowingdata.com allow users to create custom visualisation pages for what they’re most interested in and encourage you to ‘play’ with the data.

In theory, brands could have an enormous pool of data at their disposal should these tools become mainstream enough to attract sufficient users. While many personal data tracking accounts monitor health and leisure habits, many others track brand usage, product usage and attitudes towards brands. Personal informatics could help brands spot emerging competitors faster and track whims and fads with more agility than conventional methods. However, criticism of social networking sites that have deployed their members’ data for commercial gain mean that brands need to tread carefully: an assumption that you own the data simply because it is publicly available is imprudent.

On the other hand, brands are beginning to wake up to the potential of incorporating personal informatics into their business propositions – most notably Nike, through its joint venture with Apple and a handful of health clubs to produce the Nike + iPod package. It’ll be interesting to see how others follow suit.

The above image comes from Mapmaker, a user of the Mycrocosm personal informatics website, and is reproduced here with thanks.

Eleanor Cooksey writes:

I have been enjoying the current BBC Radio 4 series ‘A History of the World in a 100 objects’ in which Neil McGregor, the Director of the British Museum, tells a history of humanity using objects from the museum’s collection. As I listened to his intricate description of the pestle, it made me realise that objects, things, ‘stuff’ – or however we like to call them – still have a very important role to play in our lives.

It is often easy to assume we live in a ‘post material’ world, but in a post credit crunch recovery marketplace, should we re-evaluate how we think about ‘stuff’? Looking at data from our 2009 Global Monitor Survey suggests that it is perhaps worth reviewing our hypotheses. Consumers are less likely to agree that they have all the material things they need: in the UK, this dropped from 60% in 2008 to 56% in 2009. In fact, the only market surveyed where feelings of material satisfaction have increased is Australia. Moreover, though we may not have everything we need, we are also less likely to buy more as spending without consequences is no longer in favour.  Again, all markets – bar China – are showing a greater reluctance to take on debt. This suggests we are more likely to value what we have now.

Our research also suggests that people are still as interested in spending on experiences as accumulating possessions, but this is less about extreme experiences, and more about the enjoyment of simpler pleasures. Such pleasures, in fact, could consist of listening to something interesting on the radio, or going to a museum.

The image above is from the BBC’s ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects‘ website, and is used with thanks. For more information about accessing Global Monitor, please contact our UK Marketing and PR Manager, Jennifer Childs.

Andrew Curry writes:

Whatever the disappointments about the Copenhagen talks, it’s clear that consumers have fairly strong attitudes to sustainability issues, and these  have barely been affected by the financial crisis. That was the view of a recent report on our Henley Planning for Consumer Change [PCC] research in New Civil Engineer. Indeed, politicians seem to be lagging consumers on the question of sustainability.

The managing director of The Futures Company’s London office, Will Galgey, told NCE that “The key thing is that there hasn’t been a significant diminishing of engagement with environmental issues. In fact we see the importance of those issues continuing to rise.”

At the same time, consumers increasingly see the links between environmental behaviours and financial prudence. But not all businesses seem to have registered this.

Frank Price, sustainability director at the engineering consultancy Grontmij, argues in the article, “Some businesses may be tempted to reel in their focus on sustainability, based on a false belief that the finances needed to introduce sustainable practices could be better spent elsewhere. On the contrary, businesses that are looking to save money and reduce costs should be looking at their sustainability measures as a priority.”

The costs of not increasing the level of business sustainability are likely to be measured in business reputation. PCC data show that 79% agree that companies have a responsibility to support the communities they operate in, and businesses are identified by some distance as the group “most at fault for causing environmental damage”. At the same time, trust in businesses continues to decline. Potentially this adds up to a vicious circle in which it is difficult for businesses to increase their credibility – or a welcome opportunity to rebuild trust.

For more information about accessing Planning for Consumer Change, please contact our UK Marketing and PR Manager, Jennifer Childs. The picture at the top of the post is from Australia’s fmcg sustainability institute, and is used with thanks.

• A startling look at some London locations, now and in the 1870s. You can catch the full exhibition for free at the British Library until March.

• In the aftermath of the Copenhagen climate summit, come these not so good things we’ve seen; this map starkly shows the globe if countries are resized to represent their fossil-fuel based emmisions:

Whilst this one shows the countries sized proportionately in terms of the predicted distribution of climate-sensitve diseases, such as malaria, malnutrition, and diarrhea:

The maps are from the UN’s State of the World Population 2009 report (Via Global Dashboard).

• The world’s first supercomputer – Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine -  has been rebuilt in California. It’s essentially a very large calculator, but it’s quite spectacular to watch in action.

• Shereen El Feki, an academic from Cairo, talks about the potential for pop culture in the Arab world. And on a similar, but slightly more provocative note, here’s more anecdotal evidence of Western cultural influence in Afghanistan.

• Google Chrome’s new advert shows the latest features for its browser with an ironic twist.

• And finally – on a completely frivolous note -  Bruce Lee plays Table Tennis with Nunchucks, taken from Gawker’s Top 100 viral Youtube videos of 2009. All are shorter than 3 minutes!

Compiled by Oliver Wright

It’s been a little while since we last posted an assortment of links, but this is a selection of some of the things which have been going round the office lately:

• Boris – the London Mayor – officially launches the city’s ‘cycle superhighways’, a cycle hire scheme, and demand for cycle parking in the capital is (apparently) on the rise…
• The inside-out bloody mary – a new take on an old classic!
• By way of previewing a forthcoming post on data visualisation – two great articles discussing the state of the art on CNNtech and Creativity Online
• This fun website from Dutch company Hema (similar to Ikea in the UK) won some awards for its playful approach to household products. Although the site’s in Dutch, the visual gags are pretty universal.
• Portuguese workers are struggling in the recession to find jobs – and some are heading to former colony Angola in search of better fortunes
• The Atlantic publishes a somewhat timid and fairly American list of ‘Brave Thinkers’ – I mean, Steve Jobs? Mark Zuckerberg? We’re working on a list of people who deserve a place but aren’t here. Do you have a contribution?

Andrew Curry writes:

Another organisation which has changed its name recently is the National Consumer Council, which became Consumer Focus on 1st November – not just a piece of rebranding, since it took on new responsibilities at the same time.

As part of the planning for the handover, we ran a futures project with the NCC on how consumer advocacy would look in 2020. The report was published by the NCC shortly before the handover.

The analysis and the process are laid out in the report. The work identified four significant challenges for 2020 – some adaptive, some emerging:

• Engaging the less-engaged: How can consumer policy advocacy organisations continue to engage and maintain their dialogue with an increasingly diverse and fragmented population?

• Supporting empowerment: How to provide consumers with the skills and confidence to promote and protect their interests, to ensure that they get a fair deal, and that they have access to the right communication channels to make their voices heard.

• Managing consumption in a resource-stretched world: How will consumer behaviour and advocacy change in a world in which consumption is more constrained?

• Global relations for the benefit of consumers and producers: How to operate at a sufficiently global level to give consumers power over global and international matters which affect their interests.

The report’s not currently available from the NCC site, one of those technicalities to do with reassigning NCC legacy pages to the new organisation’s web site. For the moment, therefore, you can download it via the link below.

And a word about the picture at the top of the page; it’s by Ian Mcdermott, an illustrator who sat in on the futures workshop abd sketched his impressions of the discussions going on around him. The work he produced on the day illustrates the report – a series of visual metaphors, if you like.

You can download the report here:

ncc2020_viewofconsumerfutures

From Rashbre Central

Joe Ballantyne writes:

I was browsing in the wonderful Rough Trade record shop in Notting Hill the other day, and I noticed that they’ve started an ‘album club’ service. For a monthly fee they send you a new album, chosen from a selection and tailored around your musical preferences.

At first glance, this looks like a rather counter-intuitive business decision – half the fun of going to Rough Trade is about rummaging around the racks in search of lost gems. If CDs arrive on your doormat every month, even with Rough Trade packaging wrapped around them, there’s less chance of randomly coming across a few titles that you feel you may just have to take home. It also seems quite old-fashioned, in an age when music distribution is increasingly digital and consumers are supposed to be sovereign.

However, the idea of the album club seems to fit into a wider trend we’ve been observing recently – ‘choice editing’. Consumers are exposed to an ever-growing selection of goods, services and brands (and the number of CDs released every year remains high despite falling sales) – but at the same time there is some evidence that we’re less interested in spending time sifting through them. Making choices takes time and energy – both resources which we are short of. The choice editor becomes an trusted (and expert) friend who can cut through the market noise.

Perhaps in future, it won’t be endless choice which is going to be seen as a luxury – but rather, being able to pay others to make our choices for us. But only a few companies have sufficient credentials to earn that trust.

The picture – of Rough Trade West in Talbot Road – is from the Rashbre Central blog.