EraNova News: Latest Developments
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
EraNova Institute / www.eranova.com
"Hyper-Human" Trend #1 of Top 10 for 2005, World Futurists Say
To maximize success, leading companies will empower skills that cannot be automated
MOUNTAIN LAKES, NJ, October 11 -- While companies will continue "off-peopling" many tasks to technology, they will simultaneously put even more emphasis on skills that cannot be automated. This trend, identified by Richard W. Samson of EraNova Institute, was selected as the number-one forecast from the "top 10" by the editors of The Futurist magazine, published by the World Future Society, Bethesda, Md.
The 10 forecasts are detailed in "Outlook 2005," the latest of the society's annual prognostications: www.wfs.org/forecasts.htm.
The trend highlighted for 2005 is a shift from human to "hyper-human" skills in the workplace. The transformation is expected to start in a few forward-looking companies and then spread throughout the U.S. and world. Hyper-human skills, the basis of the coming "hyper-human economy," include caring, judgment, intuition, ethics, inspiration, friendliness, and imagination -- qualities hard to mechanize or computerize.
Through training in hyper-human skills, an office assistant, for example, would morph into an "administrative response specialist" by honing situation-management and problem-anticipation skills. Scientists and engineers would heighten their perception, analysis, and creativity through "hyper" degrees of mind-management. Executives would broaden the scope of their responsibility to fully embrace social and environmental as well bottom-line concerns.
The World Future Society is one of the premiere trend spotters for business, academia, and government. Over the years, the society's Outlook has alerted decision makers to key developments including the Internet, virtual reality, and the end of the Cold War.
The trend identified by Samson (featured in Outlook 2005) is more fully explained in "How to Succeed in the Hyper-Human Economy," an article by Samson appearing in the September-October issue of The Futurist. Samson is Director of EraNova, a New Jersey think tank.
EraNova has developed three approaches for helping companies, government agencies, and non-profits move rapidly to the hyper-human economy:
(1) Mind Over Tech -- To ramp up productivity in a way that benefits everyone, "working smarter and transferring the dull stuff to technology."
(2) Mind Over Marketing -- To expand income by looking through the hyper-human business-development lens.
(3) Mental Leverage Online -- To support hyper-human behavior through aids on the Internet and phone networks.
Explanatory documents may be downloaded free from the EraNova Institute site: www.eranova.com. Outlook 2005, which sells for $4, is available from the World Future Society at www.wfs.org/reportorder.htm.
Samson, an expert on the mind and technology, recently coined the term "off-peopling" to highlight the transfer of human tasks to all-automatic solutions. "Off-peopling is an elephant of an issue," he says, "while offshoring is a mouse." Off-peopling, he predicts, could shrink the middle class and add fuel to civil unrest if not accompanied by parallel empowerment of higher skills only humans can deliver.
Samson has published 10 books and served as consultant to AT&T, Cisco and IBM. His latest book, "MIND OVER TECHNOLOGY: Coming Out On Top as a Wired World Starts to Run On Automatic," is the basis of his Futurist article. It is 268 pages; ISBN 1-59457-234-8; from Global Book Publisher, a partner of R.R. Bowker. It is available from Amazon.com, Borders.com, Alibris.com, BookSurge.com, bookstores, and by phone at 866-308-6235. An excerpt may be downloaded from www.eranova.com.
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