Future

The world has reached a bit of a weird place. For years, the only way was up. Suddenly, it all seems like it is down. In fact, it seems to have gone off the rails and, in the classic phraseology stop the world, I want to get off. When times are good, markets are going…

The BBC just shared a report about Cruise, a self-driving company that has launched a commercial taxi service in San Francisco. The driverless future is here today. It made me reflect on where we are at. Where we are at is at a juncture where most menial tasks will be run by software. Taxi rides,…

I’ve said for years that MasterCard has the wrong name. Cards are so last century. This century is all about the chip, so MasterCard should be renamed MasterChip. For the first time the other day, I found a banker who agrees with me. Reuters reports that Brazil’s central bank chief Roberto Campos Neto said he believes…

Inspired by an article by Ilias Louis Hatzis, and my recent musings around a cashless world, I wondered what privacy is these days? What is private? Are we bothered about privacy? I guess many have let their guard down about privacy this century as, when everything is online, we no longer have any. We allow…

I got into a debate about my blog from Friday about money creating inequality, and how the future of space and sci-fi would have no money. I guess this resonates with most of my writing from discussing Metropolis – one of my favourite films, along with its many successors such as Hunger Games and In…

The exciting area for me is always our technological future. Reusable rockets, life on Mars, quantum computing, robotics, artificial intelligence, the metaverse, blockchain, renewable energy and more are all going to transform the way we live over the next few years. What does this mean in reality? I could describe each one in depth, but…

Society is changing rapidly, every day. We don’t see it but, if you take a dip into the worlds of 1982, 1992, 2002, 2012 and 2022, you can see the massive changes in how we live, work, relate, talk and transact. Back in the 1980s, no one had computers; we had rotary telephones; the main…

On reflecting the past decade of innovation in FinTech, it’s been interesting watching the struggles of regulators to keep up. The challenge is that the regulators haven’t been able to keep up. They allowed a lot of things to happen which, now, they’re trying to address. Let’s take a few examples. First, Peer-to-Peer Lending (P2PL)….

I worry sometimes that my writing these days about how finance, technology and ESG combine will alienate many in finance and technology. It shouldn’t, as these two industries hold the keys to the solutions, but it has moved the agenda from where I came from to where I’m going to. When I reflect on the…

I launched the new book Digital for Good in London the other day, and was joined by many friends in my network. The main highlight of the event was a panel discussion on where we are going with four panellists: Gail Bradbrook, Co-founder, Extinction Rebellion Gihan A.M. Hyde, Founder & CEO, CommUnique Tram Anh Nguyen,…