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Saturday, September 22, 2012

Futuristic Prediction


I have already made it clear that I am not much for Futuristing, however the article America in the year 2020 (Kiyosaki 2006) is the most lopsided article written that has a scientific, governmental  hole or just a plain bucking of economic policies that history has ever shown.

The article states that “Oil will sell for approximately $250 to $300 per barrel and gasoline prices will be around six dollars a gallon. “ The force that is going to go against this fact is several fold. First of all, the U.S. currently has the largest supply of oil in Alaska, Texas and offshore than any other country in the U.S. No one actually knows how much oil we do or do not have, this is like the crazy times of the oil shortage in the 1970’s when cars had to line up for gasoline on opposite days depending upon the last number of their license plate number. In addition, solar, wind, thermal and several other types of renewable energy are making great strides so that gasoline will not be needed. All of the major governments are putting this into place so that the manufacturers of the vehicles run on alternate sources of energy.

The electric supply will become spotty and unreliable. Infrastructure problems combined with fuel shortages will cause brownouts and blackouts during periods of peak demand (Especially during the coldest winter nights and the hottest summer days). In some areas scheduled blackouts may become routine.” Whoa! What about nuclear reactors being built at record rates? What about the fact that the average person that lives around a reactor feels safer now than they ever did in the history of reactors?

The US auto industry will be gone, as will the larger cars we now enjoy. People will be buying smaller fuel-efficient Japanese and Korean cars, the smaller the better. (Detroit simply can't compete with the Japanese when it comes to the manufacture of reliable, fuel-efficient smaller cars.)” Has this guy actually looked at what Ford and GM are putting out these days? Cars that are exceeding 50 miles per gallon, cars with solar energy built into them, cars that are fully charged by electric, not just hybrid?

This guy really should not be taken seriously at all; however there is one prediction that he did make that is already true, “The US will become the single most hated country in the world. US government officials will 
be unable to travel to many places overseas as they will fear arrest for war crimes. American tourists will have to travel very carefully and restrict their wanderings to the few countries where Americans are warmly received.” No one can debate that statement, but then again with NATO, all of those countries actually do WANT to be like the U.S. Even Russia has now joined the WTO.

I guess you give a guy a pen and a piece of paper and anyone is a writer these days.

Reference
Kiyosaki, R. (2006). "America in the year 2020." The Hard Times Gazette.
           


lesson learned

This was the Animoto video that I created that enabled me to being a Realtor base of clients for future developments of an inexpensive way to advertise their listings;

http://youtu.be/ruGmmsOCT7w



Lessons Learned

I definitely found this class to provide me with a very different aspect than that of other classes. First of all, I spent most of the time in the hospital, albeit doing my work. In other classes, where the required reading would require certain chapters as did this one, I read all three books cover to cover. I never knew what Futuring was and now I have a different respect and outlook on it. Although I do see, especially in the models of Wall Street predictors, there is a lot of money to be made, that those making the most money were those investor advisors that were writing the newsletters on the predictions. One of the books even compared the actual S&P 500 over a certain period of time, 108 newsletters and a coin being flipped as to who was on the upside most of the time. The S&P 500 edged out the other two with the coin nudging out the newsletter predictors. Yet still, they still earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in writing the newsletters.

The second most important aspect of what I took from this class was the creation of the Animoto platform. As the owner of a social media marketing group, I found a way to market on a white label basis (paying the $499 annual fee) and offer my services to create videos/ slide shows for weddings, events, but especially within the Realtor circles. Then becoming a re-seller for a nationally known print media company, I was able to promote the Realtors open houses and their accompanying videos through printing invitations given at the open house that included a QR symbol that I put on the self-designed media which in turn allowed the potential client to scan the QR code and then watch on their smartphone or tablet, the Animoto creation. The Realtors think I walk on water.

From this many ideas came out of this class that I now use in real life. I only wish that I was able to get to the SL and Breeze sessions, however without regard to the actual grade, I took away from this class valuable real life information that will make me money far into the future.

Although I will never take into consideration Futuring as a living, I can absolutely see where I believe that the future of social media will go, but I will keep that to myself because with the state of technology, the iPhone5 that was released yesterday (Friday September 21st) will be old news during the next holiday season. Microsoft will then meet them, Google will buy another Motorola type company and the titans of the industry will keep the technology coming at us so fast and furious that if we WERE to write about our predictions, by the time they were to go to print, they would already be outdated.

Personally, I like not knowing that no one else in my industry knows exactly what is happening, because that gives me a leg up on everything because it makes me believe that I and only I, know what is going to happen next….. and I am not sharing.