Will McInnes

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Exploring the near-future and better ways to do business

Bookshelves of the future

I suddenly began to think about the books that we have on the bookshelves at NixonMcInnes.

Each one that I have read represents a mini-journey, sometimes just a step and sometimes a leap.

Each one is remembered for its key ideas, the time and place that it was read in – each book tagged with memories and expectations.

And together they represent more – an aggregate, a narrative of the journey particularly because we were reading them to learn and directly inform the company’s early development. Part of our ‘street MBA’, to borrow from a Spanish colleague on a recent course.

Which got me to bookshelves.

Bookshelves as containers for memories.
Bookshelves as stories.
Bookshelves as trophy cabinets.
Bookshelves as personal or group manifesto.

Now, with my Kindle clutched, what will my bookshelf be or do?

Now, with content and ideas fragmenting and my learning happening just in time, facts fetched by search engine and feeds gather by reader, links stumbled upon in social networks, how will I curate my own bookshelf?

How will I remember what I got from where? Most importantly to me how will I share what I’ve found and enjoyed?

I wonder.

Filed under: Futures

Now-ists

Suddenly, probably just to me, it seems like the world is awash with futurists.

Thinkers, futurologists, labs, institutes and ‘tanks.

But the other current ripping under this visible tide is the makers, the do-ers.

Do lectures, inspired by and inspiring people that do. Makers faires and hacker spaces and Etsy. Hexayurt and Global Guerillas. Not so much futurists as right-fucking-Now-ists.

With the world spinning as it is towards a very different way of being I suppose we need both.

But when the revolution comes I know who I’ll want on my side.

Filed under: Futures, Making/Doing

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