The Economist editors pick trends for 2016

http://www.economistgroup.com/leanback/the-next-big-thing/economist-editors-2016-trends-most-contagious-lane-green/

“The World in 2016” marks 30 years that The Economist has been in the prediction game. Every year around this time, our writers and some invited guests put their heads together to tell the world what will happen next year. This year, we have a special section on how it’s done: we have an astrologer, a novelist, numerous futurologists and experts on testing predictors themselves, each of whom tell us how they look into their future in a different way.

Is the pace of business really getting quicker?

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21679448-pace-business-really-getting-quicker-creed-speed


Inditex, the owner of Zara, a “fast fashion” retailer, designs 40,000 products a year that are shipped to stores twice a week. It has helped end the idea that fashion only has two big seasons a year. But the ever faster flow of frocks requires steady purpose in other dimensions of the business. It employs 900 folk in its design department, rather than outsource this function to fickle outsiders. It has persuaded its suppliers to accept payment in 160 days, twice as long as a decade ago. The manufacturers in its European network stick around for many years. Its assets are expected to last a decade and it invests twice as much per dollar of sales as its peer group. Its founder, Amancio Ortega, has held a controlling stake for 40 years.

8 shocking predictions for life after 2020 from Google's genius futurist

http://www.techinsider.io/ray-kurzweil-most-extreme-predictions-2015-11



http://uk.businessinsider.com/15-startling-incredible-and-provactive-predictions-from-googles-genius-futurist-2015-9

Who are the most powerful people in the media right now?

http://www.theguardian.com/media/ng-interactive/2015/nov/30/mediaguardian-100-2015-interactive-guide

The Future of Work

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/nov/29/five-ways-work-will-change-future-of-workplace-ai-cloud-retirement-remote


By absorbing the most routine aspects of our jobs, optimists argue, machines are freeing us up to concentrate on more creative, thoughtful activities. This may be true for some, but, as the Silicon Valley entrepreneur and author Martin Fordsays: “The reality is that a very large fraction of our workforce is engaged in activities that are on some level routine, repetitive and predictable.” If this is the case, retraining a large portion of the workforce to engage in more creative activity beyond the reach of automation will pose an enormous challenge.

From Cleopatra to John Carter: The Biggest Box Office Turkeys in Hollywood History

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/photos/2015/11/biggest-movie-turkeys

Ironically, what few mention is that Cleopatra was also the highest grossing movie of 1963, and yet still failed to make a profit. They truly don’t make them like that anymore—for a very good reason.

The rise and fall of the unicorns

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21679202-some-private-technology-firms-are-having-trouble-justifying-their-lofty-valuations-rise-and


Many investors in unicorns had bet that a new generation of technology firms would unsettle the old guard, but that has not happened as quickly as they had predicted. Tech giants like Amazon, Google and Facebook have continued to grow impressively, especially considering their already large size; and they have been adept at entering new markets that startups might otherwise have claimed. For example, Facebook has bought and built messaging apps that compete with Snapchat, and Dropbox has a rival in Amazon, whose cloud-storage business is large and growing quickly. Compared with most profitless startups, the big firms are not outrageously valued. It may become clearer to investors that they not only overestimated the unicorns but underestimated the incumbent firms’ growth prospects.

Why are some movie stars bomb-proof?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/by-the-sea/angelina-jolie-box-office-flop/

“There’s never-ending debate about do big stars actually sell movies,” says the sales executive. In his 2012 study The Economics of Creativity, finance professor S Abraham Ravid of New York’s Yeshiva University concluded that they didn’t. Star worship “is all but a myth”, he wrote. “Stars can still sell magazines, but not movies” His research showed that the most successful films consisted – surprise – of simple, well-told stories.

Anton Corbijn is bowing out of professional photography

http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2015/11/musical-iconography


PHOTOGRAPHY as a slow, analogue art-form is dead. Over 200,000 photos are uploaded to Facebook per minute—that’s six billion each month—and there are over 16 billion photos on Instagram. Thanks to digital products anyone can be a Photoshop hack, selfie whore or filter junkie. We see with our smartphones, not our eyes. What need do we have for old-fashioned specialists using toxic chemicals to make a physical print that can be neither insta-shared nor “liked”?

Man says he invented 'Phuc Dat Bich' hoax to fool news media and Facebook

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/nov/25/man-says-he-made-up-vietnamese-name-hoax-to-fool-news-media-and-facebook

The post went viral in mid-November. Media including the Sydney Morning Herald, news.com.au, SBS, BBC.com, the Herald Sun and 9news.com.au – reported the story, though Phuc Dat Bich gave no interviews.  

Not one journalist had got confirmation that “Phuc Dat Bich” was indeed his name.

Suspicions were aroused by technology publisher and journalist Trevor Long who wrote this prescient post on his website EFTM examining the evidence and concluding it was probably fake.

“What is the evidence?” Long asked. “His passport. Not that a journalist from any of the above organisation have sighted his passport – that he posted a photo of his passport on Facebook.

Even Michael Lewis Was Surprised Hollywood Bet on The Big Short

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/11/the-big-short-movie-michael-lewis


One thing the author didn’t worry about when he wrote his 2010 best-seller was how to interest filmmakers. Who would—or could—make a movie about credit-default swaps? As Brad Pitt, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, and Christian Bale bring the book’s complex narrative to life, Lewis expresses his astonishment.