In a matter of 2 minutes I was presented two seemingly unrelated articles on Flipboard Technology section yesterday. Rather small news items as we have seen them before, so nothing special at first glance:

Computer wins match from a qualified Human and an other health app able to diagnose an illness or condition without the help of a trained medical worker.

If you have read Al Gore’s book “The Future” this type of news titbits are part of a pattern. Two patterns actually: the democratisation of the web and robosourcing. I have not used that last terminology at Red Planet Dust before – thanks Al! – but made ample reference to human decision-making being assisted and (eventually) replaced by software (Example posts: 1, 2, 3).

Recognising trends and understanding their dynamics is important if one wants to understand the type of challenges we are confronted with. This understanding does not imply that one can predict the future or that one can plan a companies way to a desired point on the horizon in say 5-10 years.

Intrigued as I am on what is going on in our time and age, both personally as professionally, it is not my aim with Red Planet Dust to uncover and explore the mega trends that pose such great challenge – both positively as negatively – to us, as individuals, as companies (and other forms of – semi – organised groups) and our society. These mega trends are well documented by now. Just read Gore’s book and you are pretty much up to steam on the matter.

No, I am interested in how these changes caused by these mega-trends will influence the way we collaborate.

  • On the micro level I am interested to see how we as humans, as individuals are shaped (and changed) by what is going on. (Example posts: 1, 2 and 3)
  • On a macro level I am interested in how collaboration and decision-making is changing within and between companies (Example posts: 1, 2 and 3).
  • On a Meta level I am interested to understand how these trends are influencing the fabric of society. Were we are using explicit ways of collaboration and the way we are scoping our tools like standardisation and money and also how our implicit way of collaboration is going to develop. (Example posts: 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5)

To be able to uncover and explore the influence of the mega-trends on our human collaboration it is necessary to have a view on what we are and how we perceive ourselves. (example posts: 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5)

If you have been reading the posts on Red Planet Dust you will recognise how these fit in to my field(s) of interest.