Regine's interview is a very interesting way of stepping away from projects and having a meta-discussion of emerging tech/art trends. Today, the interview of Peder Burgaard is very pertinent for that matter.

The guy is studying Information Studies at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, working as a Gadgethunter and an event manager at Innovation Lab (a neat consultancy group in Denmark that is right on spot of my interests with regards to their "technology insights division"). Some excerpts of the interview I liked:

Technology will be moving even faster and among others will the convergence of established disciplines in the future contribute to this increased pace. Convergence in research fields will be more common because we are increasingly looking to apply the construction work of Mother Nature for creation of advanced technology. So the biologist will need more mathematics and vice versa. Also the merging of biotechnology and nanotechnology will create a demand for researchers which interdisciplinary skills. A forerunner of this trend is Stanford University’s Bio-X Lab of interdisciplinary research connected to engineering, computer science, physics, chemistry, biology, math and medicine (Bio-X Lab).

A future ability to reverse engineer the human organs and other advances in technology will keep the pace of new discoveries at an exponential level of unheard dimensions if compared to past rates of discoveries. Some predicts that the next 50-100 years will yield advances in technology equivalent to 14.000 years of previous discoveries. So modern society will experiencing even more rapid changes in the future. (...) The interaction art projects at NEXT are to be seen as an emerging trend where involvement of artists and designers in the finishing touch of consumer products will increase. So the gab between pure consumer development and artist esthetic expressions will be winding and eventually join forces. Research studies have shown that more esthetic products have a correlated improvement on user interaction. And the ever increasing demand on technology for ease of use will have artist leading the way of innovation in the future. Perfects example of this is the iPod which have a beautiful design and just feels nice and intuitive to operate.

Why do I blog this? I like this kind of agenda: the NEXT conference has an important point: introducing new technologies that to a broader audience than just researchers and forecaster. Moreover, I fully agree with the trends he describes. The Innovation Lab also seems to have an very good model (consultancy + insight division).