Our first blog from Heather Corker, VP of the newly opened Future Foundation New York office, taking a look at the latest trends, news and views from the USA.

The national dish here is not curry, but take-away – in any form.

New York City has long been famous for its 24-hour mentality. But technology today has added another dimension to this 24 hour society; more, social media has made instant access – all hours access – available to everyone, not just in the city that never sleeps. The End of Adventure is playing out quite nicely on the streets of America today.

One of the biggest differences I’ve noticed jumping the pond from the UK to the US is just how much more social Americans are – but not in the traditional sense. While mobile platforms and their functionality were adopted far more quickly in the UK and Europe initially, Americans are more actively involved in the everyday, on-the-ground use of social media via their phones as they go throughout their day.  Using every form of social media not just to show the world what they are doing and who they are doing it with, but to find the information they need.

Yelp, in particular, is not a new concept. It has been around for ages, but pray for the business that receives a bad review -  their end may be night.  Be it because no one wants to waste their hard earned cash on a venue or experience that is only, well OK; or because our time is too precious to be spent at any place other than the best of venues, with an excellent happy hour, the best flat white in the city or food which worthy of an instagram mug shot  -  in New York, cafes, salons, Laundromats live and die by their Yelp review.

If there were ever any doubt that transparency is now integral to every business-consumer relationship, this is it.  There is simply too much choice and too many new venues to wade through – very little is now left to chance. If walking down the street and in need of a quick coffee, bite to eat or a spur of the moment mani-pedi where do I turn? Even in a hurry, mediocre will just not do. So I don’t leave it to chance, I leave it to Yelp.

In fact today, not only did I look up the nearest  mani-pedi salon to my home; I ensured it had received no bad reviews in the last 6 months, on any site  -  because you are only ever as good as your latest review. In the last week I have used online review services (why ask a friend when I can ask my phone?) to book my hair appointment, find a venue for happy hour, book dinner, “discover” a quiet, cool cafe to spend my Sunday morning reading the paper, and found a gym to join (who have very kindly provided me with a free one-week trial while I determine whether or not to jump on board). The list, as you can tell, could go on.

But these habits speak to a bigger social trend -  the need to share. It is my fellow citizens – the collective of New Yorkers and tourists alike – who are banding together to make sure that not one of us need have a bad experience. Or that we are at least warned of the possibility ahead of time.

What consequences does this have for businesses? How must they now interact?  Now that consumers are talking to each other, brands need to join the conversation -  and they must offer complete transparency.  You’ve heard this, we know.  But getting the response right is critical.  Brands must acknowledge where they have gone wrong, answer questions and reply to bad reviews. Talk to your consumers like friends, not as a potential sale.

People are social. Brands need to get involved.

For more on nVision US or our NY office, please contact Heather Corker – heatherc@futurefoundation.net

In time for the Future Foundation conference on 14 May, we spoke to a couple of emerging tech companies to explore where technology is coming from, where it is heading, and why our modern world is just so ripe for the raft of innovation we’re currently experiencing.  Resident tech-head Will explains.

As part of our nVitro research, we are constantly keeping our finger on the pulse of emerging technology and the trends driving it. It’s important to imagine how current trends will evolve in future technological environments, as well as to envisage some of the totally new trends forced upon us by these new technologies.

We began our journey with a trip to London’s Google Campus, where we met a few of their startups-in-residence. We also travelled outside London, meeting international entrepreneurs at the Gadget Show Live in Birmingham and visiting Silicon Fen in Cambridge. From this, we have identified 4 ways that the technology of tomorrow will change everything.

1)      Connectivity: we spoke to London-based EVRYTHNG about the future of the internet. If the last ten years have told the story of getting every person online, the next ten years will be about getting every thing online. Their product is an engine designed to allow all manner of objects – from your wristwatch to your steak – to gain a digital identity.

2)      Information: why do we want a connected world? Because, with the information generated by every one of our possessions, we will start to gain genuinely useful insights into our lives. This isn’t just about eating enough omega-3, or getting your 30 minutes of exercise – Narrato, at the Google Campus, are building a tool with which to analyse ALL our data in one place. This is about moving from the Quantified Self to totally informed decision making, driven by real-time knowledge of your financial status, your health status and even what influences your mood. There is so much room for brands to enter this real-time data-mood-experience exchange.

3)      Wearable Tech: doesn’t all this data-mood-experience sound a bit Brave New World? Maybe, if we were constantly reading our smartphones, trying to interpret our metadata. But we won’t be – in fact, we won’t even notice that we’re being monitored until some fantastically useful insight is revealed to us, such as “alcohol level still too high to drive”, or “before you go through the ticket barrier, have you forgotten that the Piccadilly Line is closed?”. Wearable tech bears our digital identity around smart environments, but also opens up context-sensitive interfaces that are far quicker and easier to use than a touchscreen smartphone: this is one of the reasons behind Hoverkey (also at Campus), an NFC security card developed to physically “log in” to smartphone apps. No to usernames and passwords. Yes to seamless digital environments.

4)      New interfaces: every surface has the potential to be interactive. And this doesn’t mean wall-to-wall touchscreens. It means hidden technology that only becomes visible when needed, when actually useful. The Xbox Kinect showed how any space can be made into a control mechanism. Novalia, based in Cambridge, has designed processes that make paper interactive. The best part is that, unlike say, a tablet, when you’re not interacting with these surfaces, they don’t become dead weight – they just go back to being good old useful paper.

The bottom line? A lot of people see Google Glass as another step on the path to Murder by Modernity, bemoaning new tech, constant updates and the demands for instant information. But there is another way out: make the tech better.  Pretty soon, kids won’t be checking texts at dinner time or taking phone calls in the cinema: tech will certainly be everywhere, but it won’t be interrupting our lives. In our conversations, we’ve realised that the future will have fewer screens, fewer distractions. Computers are learning human – tomorrow won’t have wires, buttons or charging docks. In fact, we think the future will look more like the past. That’s why we’ve started calling it Yesterday’s World.

Our Hyper Individual trend references those who are harnessing the wealth of technology now available to 21st century consumers in order to learn new methods of efficiency, speed and accuracy.

The Hyper Individual is not just the multi-tasker searching for a good deal. Or the consumer who tracks their health and home energy use. Or the one who uses technology to automate some of their financial decisions. The Hyper Individual is the confluence of all these  -  the consumer who lives in the Cloud.

Clearly, Hyper Individuals are currently a small group. And it's unlikely that mainstream consumers will be transformed into fully fledged hypers overnight. But what's striking is the explosion of apps competing for attention in this space. Via Launchgram, for example, Hyper Individuals can stay informed about new products long before their official release. Resultly, meanwhile, provides alerts tailored to reflect an individual's interests. Sitegeist promises to convert data from a user's surroundings into useful information. HeroButton claims to act as a digital personal assistant. And, perhaps most significant of all in this area, Google's Field Trip will anticipate the likely needs and interests of its users - providing information and facts about one’s immediate surroundings through a series of push alerts.

For the Hyper Individuals of this world, such services will hold obvious and immense appeal. But it's reasonable to think that there might be a bit of hyper lurking in all of us. We might not embrace the trend fully and with open arms, but it seems inevitable that many of us will warm to at least some of the tools and services springing up in this area.

Earlier this month, professional networking site LinkedIn announced that it had passed the 200 million member mark for the first time.

The scale of its coverage is impressive; according to a blog post, LinkedIn now has members in more than 200 countries who are using the site in 19 different languages. But perhaps more striking is the speed of recent growth; back in March 2011, the network had just half the number of users - 100 million - and it says it is now seeing 172,000 new registrations each day, with the biggest growth coming in emerging nations such as Turkey, Colombia and Indonesia.

As part of the announcement, VP Deep Nishar said he'd "like to thank each of you for helping build the LinkedIn network into what it is today. It’s been amazing to see how our members have been able to transform their professional lives through LinkedIn. You truly grasp the power of LinkedIn when you start to focus on these individual success stories".

In our increasingly Networked Society, then, it's clear that Personal Net Growth - a theme first identified by Future back in 2009 when we noted how consumers were turning to the net to boost their employability - is here to stay.