Commentary
This is the suburb of the future
One exceptional neighbourhood in Stockholm is taking the lead in smart urban development “Bagarmossen is Stockholm’s friendliest neighbourhood,” says Tobias Lind with a smile on his face. Lind knows the city inside out: he has 10 years’ experience in developing suburban areas in Stockholm and now works for Stockholmshem, Sweden’s…
Read MoreWhy involve users in IoT?
The Internet of Things (IoT) is shimmering now, but if its users – the people – are forgotten during the development, it will fail. When we are talking about the IoT, where different devices and spaces communicate by themselves, it’s easy to forget the people around them. However, there’s no…
Read MoreSharing care: 3 advantages and 1 disadvantage of sharing services in the healthcare sector
The collaborative and sharing economy seems to have established itself as a growing market model, especially in consumer markets. Demos Helsinki created two different scenarios for the hyperconnected Nordic societies of 2015 to 2040. In these scenarios, seven long-term changes were identified, one of which depicts the shift from owning things…
Read MoreTekes Views: The future looks smart
Tekes Views published yesterday a 4-page article about Demos Helsinki’s work on resource smart economy. In the article, Maria Ritola explains how scarcity of resources will be a game changer of our future lifestyles. ”Change is already here”, Ritola outlines. ”If you look at headlines from Google, Uber, Facebook or…
Read MoreRadical Futures: Energy Does not Matter in the Post-Energy Society
The core vision in the scenario publication “The Future as Told Through the Garden and the Streets” is that technologies for the hyperconnected planet enable a decoupling between increasing well-being and the consumption of natural resources. The basic requirement for that to happen is that the IoT and industrial internet…
Read MoreDigital disruption – a new opportunity for old neighbourhoods
The emergence of the digital economy and the need to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions are changing the way we live and work, faster than ever before. These megatrends have given rise to numerous smart city initiatives that aim to lead cities into a carbon neutral future with the smart use of digital technology. But…
Read MoreLearning about the Future through Scenarios
What use are scenarios? The word scenario is derived from drama, meaning a sketch of the plot of a play. In foresight, a scenario is a story with plausible cause and effect links that connect a future condition with the present, while illustrating key decisions, events and consequences throughout the…
Read MoreSpeculating radical futures: a Post-voting society?
Imagine that government tracks your every move. Frankly, they can already do that, so this should not be an immense stretch of imagination. Then imagine that the establishment does the same for everyone you know. Does this wield an absolute power of those in control over the typical citizens? Not…
Read MoreSustainable growth replaced the welfare state
In the future the years 2013-2015 will most likely be referred to as a turning point in Finnish political history. Before this time, the crux of the political consensus was in maintaining the welfare state, whereas after this point it will been seen as building sustainable growth. Demos Helsinki has analysed the recent…
Read MoreRedemption of Nordic urbanism
In the Nordic countries, migration into cities accelerated in the early 20th century, and the 1930s saw the beginning of a drive to reshape the built environment. By 1970 the majority of the population lived in cities. This shift took place comparatively late in Western European terms, enabling the relevant…
Read MoreThis is why Finland is able to implement the basic income experiment
BBC, Forbes, Independent, Mashable, Telegraph, Time and Quartz among other media outlets have have written about Finland’s experiment with basic income on a national level. However, none of the articles uncover the reason why Finland can pull off such ambitious policies in an age where so many government are left…
Read More5 ways the Internet of Things will change your business
According to the report published by Cisco in 2008 the number of devices connected to the internet exceeded the number of people in the world. The number of devices that are connected to the internet will keep rising. This growth is not just because of computers and smartphones: with the…
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