Lee Shupp has over 10 years experience in helping companies develop and refine new products and markets, working for clients like Adobe, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Microsoft, Motorola, Samsung, Vulcan Ventures and PepsiCo. Lee is resident futurist at Cheskin, combining knowledge of macrotrends with consumer insights to create unique new opportunities for clients to innovate. Lee loves exploring “street futures,” the intersection of exciting new technology and the human propensity to use technology in interesting and unexpected ways.
22 February 2008
Bill Gates announced this week that Windows 7 would include a touch interface. (Windows 7 is the code name for the next version of the Window OS, reportedly coming in 2010.) This is big news, as it is the ultimate mainstreaming of the touch interface introduced to the mass market by Apple with the iPhone . Why are touch interfaces coming to the mainstream, and why now?
28 October 2007
The New York Times business section ran an interesting article in the Sunday paper today, entitled "If It's Retail, Is It Still Rock?" The article describes the steps that many musicians and bands are taking to increase revenue in an era of declining CD sales. It includes a very fun visual overview of various musical marketing ploys, ranging from the Kiss Kasket to a $150 bottle of Bon Jovi cabernet sauvignon. Some of these example are likely to make you laugh out loud.
Smart musicians have realized that they were building brands for a long time now. And all brands face the question of brand extensibility: how far can you extend your brand without losing the brand essence, the emotional center of the brand that makes it so appealing to its core audience?
26 August 2007
As you probably recall, I have started the Big Rip, converting my entire CD collection into 256 Kbps mp3s on a network hard drive. My original plan was to rip all of my CDs, starting with roots music that I use as a musician, then going to catalog rock, jazz, world and vocal and dance music.
Current size of music folder on network hard drive: 5 Gigs
I've encountered quite a few annoying little problems, and have developed some workarounds.
25 August 2007
I've been trying to describe the difference between my iPod and my Zune to people, and here's the best description that I've come up with. My iPod is like my model girlfriend, and my Zune is like the girl next door.
25 August 2007
I am beginning the Big Rip. That's right, I’m ripping all of my CD's and selling them. All of them. I love the convenience that digital media offers, and I’m tired of the clutter and confusion of CDs. As a musician and dedicated music fan, I literally have thousands of CDs scattered all over my house. I have CDs in my living room, bedroom, studio, car, and all points in between. I have no idea how many CDs I own. I’m tired of digging thru stacks of CDs in diffferent locations to find that obscure Hound Dog CD that I'm suddenly in the mood for. I realized that what I have is a big database problem, and that I can pretty easily have all of my music available wherever and whenever I want it.
Before you laugh at this megageek project, think about the big database problem that you have, or will have soon...
22 July 2007
I was passing through Heathrow Airport in London last week, and I noticed that Prince has created yet another controversy, this time by striking a deal to include his new CD in the Sunday edition of the London Daily Mail newspaper. Record stores are rioting, fuming that this CD giveaway will undercut sales. Sony, the Purple One's record label, is so livid that they are refusing to stock his CD in record stores in England. Prince is right, Sony is wrong, and here's why:
17 July 2007
Oscar Pistorius is a South African runner who happens to be a double amputee. Known as "Blade Runner," he runs on carbon fiber legs, and he is very fast. So fast that the IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations) is considering banning him from track meets, claiming that he may have an unfair technological advantage over other runners. The problem for IAAF is that Pistorius is attracting much media and attention to the sport, while other runners are now threatened by the increasing possibility that they may be beaten by someone with no legs.
30 May 2007
Microsoft announced Surface yesterday, and the announcement has spurned lots of media attention today, with articles in the NY Times and USA Today. Glad to see it making such a splash, because it's a really cool product, and Surface provides a more more interesting and intuitive computing experience than the traditional desktop PC.
You have to see it in action to really get what it does. For a video demo, see the CNET site
We've had the privilege of working with the MSFT team the past 4 years on Surface, and it's been a really fun journey. I feel like a proud papa seeing it go public. It's wonderful to be able to contribute to our client's success. Congratulations to the MSFT team for their hard work on a really innovative product!
28 April 2007
I spent last weekend in Vancouver, at the annual gathering of the Association of Professional Futurists. The APF has consistently put on great conferences in cities where the locale fits the conference theme. (For example, a past gathering on "The Future of Reality" was held in Las Vegas; what better place to explore what reality is, and what it may mean?) This year the theme was "The Future of Identity," and one of the unique identities that we explored was the identity of Vancouver as a city. Vancouver has developed a successful model for cities of the future, and the city has done that on the premise that traffic congestion is a good thing, rather than a problem to be addressed.
2 October 2006
I've watched two episodes of a show called "Survivorman" this past week, and I'm hooked. It's a show with a pretty unusual premise: the host, Les Stroud, is dropped in the middle of the wilderness with no food, shelter, or equipment, and he has 7 days to make his way back to civilization, using his survival skills to stay alive. Les is given only the clothes on his back, a few primitive tools, and the film gear that he needs to film his adventure singlehandedly.
As someone who spends lots of time outdoors, I really like the show, because it is expanding my knowledge of how to survive in adverse circumstances. As a futurist I find the show really interesting for several reasons:
28 August 2006
I've just finished reading "Stumbling on Happiness" by Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard professor of psychology. The book applies research from psychology to analyze how we think about the future, and why our visions of the future are so often wrong. He starts by examining happiness, and what it really means. He then focuses upon three illusions of foresight:
6 July 2006
Jamais Cascio has just posted "12 things journalists to know to be a good futurist" on his blog. It's similar to the futures FAQ I posted a few days ago, but different in that it challenges commonly held media assumptions about the future. I've listed them here along with some comments.
5 July 2006
When I reveal to clients and colleagues that I'm a trained futurist, I often get bewildered looks, and then comments along the lines of "pork bellies or crystal balls?" No, I'm not a futures trader who works commodity markets. And no, I'm not a fortune teller either. I am interested in the process of change, and in how the future will be different than the present or past. Rather than "predicting" the future, I study underlying forces of change to understand how different alternative futures may play out in different contexts.
Many of my futurist friends have also encountered this confusion, so we recently posted a FAQ list of common questions about futurists and futures research. Hear is a short version for quick consumption with comments about how the FAQs apply to my world:
5 May 2006
A very interesting thing is happening in the virtual worlds of online gaming: virtual currency is being exchanged for real dollars as virtual goods and services are bought and sold online. Several good articles on this phenonenon have appeared over the past week: Business Week's cover article on Second Life, and Cool News' posting Monday on the first ATM that converts virtual dollars into real money. (Players of Entropia can now covert 10 PEDs, or Project Entropia Dollars, to one US dollar, and that US dollar can be downloaded from an ATM.)
If you earn virtual dollars online, you can now exchange them for cold hard cash! What is going on here?
What is the future of virtual currency?
15 April 2006
I recently spent a weekend in Santa Fe learning about chaos, complexity, and social network theory at the annual conference of the Association of Professional Futurists. It was a fabulous weekend with stellar speakers, including Mark Klein of MIT and Cristopher Moore of the University of New Mexico and Santa Fe Institute. Cris gave a fabulous talk entitled Diversity: A Weapon of Mass Construction, that contained some very interesting insights about complex systems that has some application to business organizations.
28 February 2006
I spent much of last week at the annual TED conference in Monterrey, CA, and it was truly inspiring. There were many truly great presentations, and lots of stimulating conversation. Once again I've experienced the TED swagger-followed by the TED slink.
20 February 2006
I've just returned from Costa Rica, where I spent 10 days on an adventure travel vacation with Backroads. I had a wonderful time there- hiking, biking, and kayaking my way across a breathtakingly beautiful country. But alas, I did not make it back with my boots. They died a slow, watery death in the rain forest and I had to leave them behind in Monteverde. This blog is in praise of old school technology that delivers meaning over many years.
24 August 2005
I love working in technology. One of my favorite aspects of technology is discovering and exploring unintended consequences- the interesting things that people do with technology that was not originally envisioned by designers. One example: machinema. Machinema (machine + cinema) is a nascent movement of aspiring filmakers who are using video games as tools to create original stories, using game characters as "actors" and game graphics as the tools to create scenes.
11 July 2005
Malcolm Gladwell's new book, Blink, is riding high on the business best seller lists. I found the book a fast and fun plane read, and agree with the basic precept that we make many decisions quickly, at the gut level, rather than rationalizing everything before we act.
Malcolm has been on the road promoting his book, and one of the subjects that keeps coming up is whether focus groups are worth doing. Malcolm argues that focus groups are dead; that they focus (pun intended) on rational, stated behavior, which is rarely in play as people make purchasing decisions.
I beg to differ. I agree that focus groups are overused- but they are a valuable tool in the market researcher's toolbox.
29 June 2005
I was in Austin, Texas for business last week, so I snuck into town for the weekend to see what was shaking. Austin has a thriving arts and music scene, and always has lots of interesting alternative culture going on.
I spent the weekend checking out underground events. By far the most fun was the roller derby, which was part punk rock, part Burning Man, and part World Wrestling Federation.
Here's why it was so interesting:
8 June 2005
Steven Johnson has just written a very interesting book called "Everything Bad is Good for You: How Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter" The book argues that many of the activities that we consider "bad," like watching network TV shows or playing video games, are actually good for us. Johnson utilizes the approach pioneered by media observer Marshall McLuhan ("the medium is the message") who focused upon the forms of media rather than content.
Focusing on form reveals many interesting insights. Take TV.
21 July 2004
I've just finished a wonderful week on vacation with Backroads, an adventure travel company based in Berkeley, California. This is their 25th year in business, and they showed me both an astute understanding of creating create customer experiences and a REALLY good time.
Adventure travel is for hyperactive children like me, who enjoy outdoor sports, love exploring, crave new experiences, and prefer to go full throttle on vacation. You can pick a sport that you like (biking, hiking, etc) or go on a multi-sport vacation that combines lots of things. I chose a multi-sport trip to Alaska that included hiking, biking, white water rafting, sea kaying, and flightseeing in a small plane. I crammed more experiences into a weeklong vacation than I thought was possible. It was wonderful.
27 April 2004
I’ve just purchased Dell’s Digital Jukebox, and I’m a happy camper. Right now I’m sitting on a long plane flight listening to Cassandra Wilson, who has taken me to an alternative reality that I much prefer to the drudgery of a cross country flight. (I could rave for days about Cassandra, one of my favorite singers, but I won’t do that here.)
Adding a soundtrack to life completely changes your experience of reality. You can proactively pick your mood (blues for a long Monday, fast funk for a work blitz, moody jazz to detach and relax) and transform experience to something much more pleasant. My digital jukebox has gone with me to the gym, the grocery store, the New York subway, and the airport, and all of these experiences have been much improved. Yes, I know social critics rant about detaching from reality, but I’m not a zombie. I still observe external reality, and I can easily hit pause if something happens worth paying attention to.
2 April 2004
The APF (Association of Professional Futurists) conference on the future of reality led me to a couple of conclusions about reality (whatever that is).
To understand the future of reality, we took an ethnographic tour of the strip in Las Vegas, played in a virtual world called Second Life, and talked about where reality is headed. This conversation required several days and nights of conversation and cocktails ;-)
What is the future of reality? A couple of observations:
1 April 2004
I spent this last weekend at an interesting conference put on by the Association of Professional Futurists. (Full disclosure: I'm on the board and active in the group.) The topic was "The Future of Reality" and it was held in Las Vegas. What better setting to talk about the future of reality than Vegas?
One of the highlights of the conference was a tour of Second Life, an online digital world built and shaped by its participants. Philip Rosedale, head of Second Life, gave us an overview of the game and led a fascinating discussion of how online social worlds mimic offline social worlds. Philip is an intelligent and thoughtful guy, and creating and nurturing the game has given him an interesting sociological experiment to observe. Think digital ant farm. Several academic institutions are studying the social world of Second Life already.
Social interaction in this virtual world has led to some really interesting behavior.
* Entrepreneurship, and an emerging economy, with game currency being exchanged with real dollars in an economic bridge between virtual and dirt worlds.
* Political organization, with an online protest that was effective in forcing the administrators to change some policies.
* Crime, and now virtual law enforcement.
I wish that I had time to really play in this world. You can fly (which I've always wanted to do). You can build things. And you can express creativity in lots of different ways, because there are few rules so far.
Go play: www.secondlife.com
23 March 2004
I just finished a 30-day trial of the Motorola MPX-200 Smartphone, currently offered by ATT Wireless. Full disclosure: I work with the Windows Mobile group, love what they are doing, and crave easy integration between my mobile phone and my Microsoft applications, most especially Outlook and the Windows Media Player. I loved the phone, but had to give it up. It was like dating a hot babe that keeps standing you up, so you have to walk away even though you'd rather not.
4 March 2004
I just bought a new mobile phone (a Samsung camera phone) and within 24 hours of activating the phone I received my first phone spam. It was a text message whose content I refuse to acknowledge, and it was infuriating. My personal belief is that there is a special section of hell reserved for spammers, with extra doses of fire and brimstone.
I hope that phone spam is not the next new trend, but I suspect that it will be, and mobile phones are woefully unprepared to deal with it. My electronic moat covers most of the rest of my communications, but not my cell phone, at least not yet. This will certainly provide the impetus for me to start looking.
18 February 2004
Saw the following article on Newscan:
Love Detector. An information technology originally developed to combat terrorism is being applied to demystify love, reports Ivan Berger in The New York Times. The technology "is based on layered voice analysis," and was created "for security work" by an Israeli company called Nemesysco. It "applies 8,000 algorithms to 129 parameters of a speaking voice, assessing among other things, levels of emotion, embarrassment and concentration, as well as whether what is said reflects certainty, uncertainty or outright lies."
I have doubts that this technology can save heartbreak, but think that it could have some cool applications to qualitative research that Cheskin does. Most qualitative research emphasizes what is said, rather than how it is said. This is problematic, because research that states that interpersonal communication is about 55% body language, 38% tone, and just 7% words themselves. While the percentages can be debated, the net is that most interpersonal communication is thru body language and tone, which are rarely analyzed in depth.
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