In this issue: MORE TRENDS FOR 2011 CROWD-SOURCED ARTS FUNDING 10 MINUTES AND 42 SECONDS BRAIN-TO-MACHINE INTERFACES NUDE TOURISM And much, much more... --------------------------------- BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL *Feeding hungry minds since 2004 --------------------------------- Issue 72 - February 2011 --------------------------------- Brainmail is a free monthly (usually) newsletter dedicated to current and future trends, statistics and other nuggets of information. To subscribe, or unsubscribe, to the world's best cerebral snackfood visit http://brainmail.nowandnext.com/ Tell the whole world about brainmail - forward this to zillions of friends. --------------------------------- : NEW TRENDS, NEW TECHNOLOGY & NEW THINKING > The New Formality Is this just fashion or something more significant? Apparently there's rising demand for wet shaves. Traditional barbershops are booming in London and New York as men move away from unisex salons offering the slouchy and scruffy look. Why could this be so? Some observers cite the TV series Mad Men. An alternative explanation might be the economic climate. A desire for authenticity, tradition and sensual pleasure might have something to do with it too. Ref: The Observer (UK) > Life Logging A company called Vicon has developed a camera called the Vicon Revue that can record your entire life. The camera, which is worn as a pendant, takes a picture every 30 seconds. This may sound narcissistic, but the device could have useful applications for elderly people suffering from memory loss. Ref: The Times (UK) > Societal Ageing Last year the number of people reaching the ripe old age of 100 in the UK reached 11,600 - an increase of over 400% since 1980. If this trend continues, the number will increase by a further 700% by the year 2034. Indeed, 50% of babies born in the UK since 2000 should see in the year 2100. Ref: The Times (UK) > War on Everything With the possible exception of cigarettes, no openly declared war on a large-scale social problem has ever resulted in defeat for the enemy. Ref: Foreign Policy (US) > Homing Snails A study by an amateur naturalist claims that snails have a homing instinct. If you wish to remove snails from your garden they need to be placed 300 feet away. Ref: The Week (UK) > A Re-Set Generation The head of Google recently suggested that because the lives of young people are so well documented on the internet, they should be able to shed their identity when they reach adulthood in order to escape from embarrassing parts of their digital past. However, this appears to contradict the thought that Google will soon know so much about people that it will be able to plan an individual's entire life. Ref: Daily Telegraph (UK) > Someone Just Like Me The age-old problem of whom young students end up sharing a dorm with could soon come to an end thanks to websites like URoomSurf, Lifetopia and RoomBug, which attempt to match likeminded room mates. Sounds like an empowering idea. But if individuals are able to pre-select people with views the same as their own, surely ideas will be reinforced instead of challenged. Ref: New York Times (US) > Risk Management Mistake Here's a thought. Risk management systems, especially in financial service companies, are generally built to avoid failures within individual companies. But using the metaphor of eco-systems, perhaps not enough attention is being paid to the risks contained within markets and systems as a whole. Ref: New Scientist (UK) > How to Be Happy A 25-year study of 60,000 Germans has found that lifestyle factors are the most significant element influencing whether or not someone is happy. Levels of neuroticism in a partner, altruism, family values and religious belief were found to be the most important factors. Conversely, people that prioritized careers and material success were found to report the biggest declines in happiness over time. Ref: New Scientist (UK) > The Ten Greatest Discoveries A poll of the best inventions and discoveries over the last 50 years has named the microprocessor to be the most significant. Other contenders were: the mobile phone, space exploration, magnetic resonance imaging, the World Wide Web, the global optical fibre network, error-correcting codes, lasers, public key encryption and green chemistry. Ref: EPSRC/New Scientist (UK) > Brain-to-Machine Interfaces Honda has teamed up with Shimadza in Japan to create a robot that can be controlled purely by human thought. Brain Machine Interface (BMI) technology currently requires implanted electrodes for commands to be accurate, but the thinking is that if signals could be accurately picked up from human skin then engineers could develop cars that could be accurately driven using nothing more than human thought. Ref: Nikkei Weekly (Japan) > Word Detective: Frommelier The recent resurgence of interest in cheese has lead to the development of cheese sommeliers - or frommeliers - in a number of high-end restaurants. Ref: SilverKris magazine (Sing) > Up in Smoke A report by analysts at Citigroup has suggested that smoking could become extinct in Britain by the year 2050. In the 1960s around 80% of adults in Britain smoked. Today the figure is around 20%. Ref: Daily Telegraph (UK) > Bored of Computer Games? Try This... Unreal Upchuck Pellets from Dunecraft are synthetic owl sick containing the skeletons of small animals. The idea is to dig out the bones and rebuild the skeletons. Perfect for budding archeologists and biologists. Ref: Scientific American (US) > Apple Patent Reading between the lines of a US patent application, Apple is attempting to make its phones theft proof by adding cardiac sensors. The idea is to compare a heartbeat picked up through the fingers to one held in the phone's memory to authenticate users. The idea could also be extended to mobile health monitoring. Ref: Daily Mail (UK) --------------------------------- : THE NUMBERS A study of 52 depictions of The Last Supper from the 6th century to 1996 has discovered that the main dish has grown in size by 69%. Ref: International Journal of Obesity Recruits going into the British army infantry have an average reading age of 7. Ref: The Financial Times (UK) 99.6% of Australian white wines costing $20 or less now feature a screw cap rather than a cork. Over $20 it's 96.1%. With red wines it's 99.2% under $20 and 74.3% over $20. Ref: The Australian (Aus) 25% of Britons aged under 35 don't know how to change a light bulb. Ref: Homeserve/Daily Mail (UK) China is the world's second largest economy, although on a per-capita basis it ranks 103rd, slightly ahead of El Salvador. Ref: The Enterprise Blog Nude tourism and recreation are worth $400-$450 million annually in the US. There are currently 268 naturist clubs and resorts in the US, up from 212 in 1988. Ref: American Association of Nude Recreation (US) The number of US Facebook users that die annually is around 375,000. Ref: The Observer (UK) Over 50% of graduates from Magdalen College, Oxford, received a first in 2010. Ref: Evening Standard (UK) In 2008, Goldman Sachs paid a tax rate of just 0.6% on its profits for the year. Ref: Harper's (US) --------------------------------- : BOOK OF THE MONTH Take your pick between... "The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World" by Evgeny Morozov and... "Turned Out Nice: How the British Isles Will Change as the World Heats Up" by Marek Kohn. --------------------------------- : WEB SIGHT OF THE MONTH A hardware store for inventors: http://www.inventables.com/ --------------------------------- : QUOTE OF THE MONTH "I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there." - Herb Caen quoted on the Boston Globe --------------------------------- : STILL HUNGRY? Not a lot of people know this, but brainmail is put together using some of the leftover bits from the What's Next trends report. So if this snack-sized newsletter is leaving you a bit hungry, go to nowandnext.com for something more substantial (and that's free too). --------------------------------- : BRAINMAIL LIVE If you are considering a future focused speaker for your next conference, workshop, or other event ask your speaker agency about Richard Watson or contact him direct via nowandnext.com. Richard is the creator of brainmail (along with Matt and Phil). --------------------------------- : SMALL PRINT The material appearing in brainmail is sourced from a variety of usually reliable publications worldwide. However, we cannot guarantee the truthfulness of stories and a degree of commonsense should be applied before quoting or using any material in a commercial context. If something appears to be too good to be true it probably is.