One of my favorite features in Wired has always been the Found column, the backpage crystal balling of artifacts from an imagined future. Palo Alto-based Institute for the Future has stolen …er borrowed this same idea as a way of getting its corporate clients to read its annual forecasting report. A great idea, in that future forecasts aren’t usually worth the tender tree meat they’re hammered into, and I speak with *some* authority, having put in my time at that bastion of future falderaldry, the World Future Society. Anyway, kudos to the Institute for appropriating a great idea. One of their clients, Proctor & Gamble, says some of the mocked-up future products in the report have actually inspired real products. Now that’s a kind of forecasting worth paying the big bucks for.
[Pictured above is the RFID Locating Lamp (shines a spotlight on RFID tags in range) and an RFID Blocker whose slogan reads: “Keep Them Out of Your Stuff!” Ahem to that, brother]