Don’t fear the robots

A recent new Yorker cover by R Kikuo Johnson painted a dystopian scene. Robots pace and trundle past a homeless human kneeling at their feet, while one deigns to lower its gaze to flip a few coins in his cup. The image expressed perfectly the pervading, and misplaced, pessimism around the…

Choices in customisation

For years mass customisation has been the holy grail of product development, providing products or services that people actually want, rather than creating backstock. Dell started selling build-to-order PCs in the 1990s, and while brands like Nike iD soon followed suit, the coming era…

Human Machine Interlace

The impact of AI on society is typically posed in terms of how it will replace humans, as pundits draw up lists of jobs that are at risk and those which are ‘AI proof’. While some tasks — and even careers — will be replaced, a more useful way to think about the future is how we will…

New retail moments

Elsewhere we have explored some of the wider social impacts of advances in transport technology. Here we are going to consider how new mobility patterns will influence impulsive purchasing behaviour, and the impact this will have on consumer packaged goods.

Perspective 05

Perspective magazine separates the signal from the noise, distilling new insights from the most important recent developments, data and opinions

In this issue we look at the next phases in the development of autonomous vehicles, particularly on how cities will influence their…

What’s the deal with digital detox?

Why we are talking about digital detoxing and why it’s not the answer to the problem.

There’s a certain irony to talking about digital detox. Our Twitter and Facebook feeds or old fashioned RSS, are regularly filled with new studies…

Anywhere in search of somewhere

In times of rapid or sudden change we are often compelled to assess the way in which we look at ourselves. The surprise of the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom and the election of Trump in the USA, not to mention the meteoric rise of Macron and Marine Le Pen in France has…

Perspective 05 has arrived

We’re now sending out Plan’s fifth annual take on notable developments in the world of mobility and tech. Our magazine Perspective is a collection of all the writing and thinking we’ve done throughout the year. And what a year 2018 has been, from the backlash against Big Tech on…

Talking technology

Voice technology produced its first mainstream sales success with the home assistant Amazon Echo. This device was released in November 2014. Since then Morgan Stanley, the financial services firm, estimates had cumulative sales of over 11 million worldwide by December 2016.