Ross Dawson, the impressive Australian futurist-with-two-feet-on-the-ground, has a knack for predicting future trends in technology and business (a good thing for a futurist).

The Chairman of Future Exploration Network ^[1] is a prominent international public speaker, writes a popular blog ^[2] and is perhaps best known as the author of the best-selling book, Living Networks ^[3], published in 2002, in which he forecast the rise of social networks, “micro-messages” (Twitter), crowdsourcing and various other digital developments we now take for granted.

This week Dawson released a list of extraordinary technologies he thinks will be commonplace seven years from now, in 2016. They include:

• People wearing video glasses as they commute, experiencing new forms of television, news updates and information about the world around them and people they meet.
• ‘Lifestreaming ^[4]‘ will be commonplace. We will capture, store and share almost continuous videos, photos and conversations from our everyday lives.
• We’ll have natural telephone conversations with computers, with almost all call centre staff replaced by automated systems.
• Public measures of individual reputation will guide who we hire, do business with, and date.
• Over 40% of Australians will work independently rather than as employees, many providing services to organisations all over the world instead of commuting to an office.
• A next generation of ‘thought interfaces‘ will allow us to control our computers just by thinking. While the technology will still be basic, we’ll have begun to merge machines and humans.

Living Networks is now available for free download ^[3].

Photo: David Sifry ^[5]