By Sara Carter
rAVe Reporter

“Look around in your home, your office, when you walk through the streets. You’ll be surrounded by stupidity and dumbness.” Lars Thomsen, chief futurist at Future Matters, a leading research and analysis consultancy in the management of business innovations and disruptive technologies, and Integrated Systems Europe 2015 keynote speaker, wasn’t referring to coworkers or family members.

“I’m not talking about humans, I’m talking about technology,” he continued, “In the next 200 weeks, we see a tremendous change in the way we interact with computers and systems and the intelligence around us.”

Thomsen explained that futurists view the world in weeks, rather than days, to explore and predict changes in society and markets in ten year periods. His speech, Trends and Tipping Points in the Electronic Systems Industry, discussed innovations and trends shaping the Audio/Visual industry in the next 520 weeks, or 10 years, until 2025.

Examining development in ten year periods emphasizes the exponential growth of its technological capabilities and the necessity of futurist thinking, Thomsen explained.

“Thrilling, energizing, absorbing and rewarding” technology is the industry standard ISE seeks to exhibit and assert to the Audio/Visual market, he asserted, citing revolutionary technology that emerged in the last 200 weeks (four years) that revolutionized consumers’ everyday lives.

“When a trend becomes obvious, you’re too late,” Thomsen said, quoting the late Steve Jobs to illustrate the importance of anticipating and reacting to industry trends. “It’s important to predict [paradigm shifts] precisely… We cannot wait until a trend is obvious because we don’t have time to run after it.”

Thomsen referred to these “paradigm shifts” as “tipping points,” or points when trends developing in on a linear basis change direction. Two tipping points lead to the ultimate conclusion that the Integrated Systems Europe show will eventually become the singular “Integrated System Europe,” an exhibition of technologies that not only work together, but understand and learn from each other.

First, Thomsen talked about the emergence of Robotics 2.0; in the next 400 weeks, he predicted, human-like robots will replace a portion of the human workforce for half the price.

“The latest generation is so intelligent that it cannot only talk to you and understand, but share experiences with fleets of other robots operating somewhere else in the world,” he said.

Thomsen then discussed the tipping point of the Internet of Things, predicting the connectivity of consumer materials and the resulting ability to make our lives more comfortable and secure, rather than complicated and expensive.

“We are seeing an explosion of what electronics can do. They can talk to each other, learn from each other, are controlled by unified devices, and will have intelligence above them that will integrate them into a system that will really make them smart,” he asserted, “We all have to work together to make this new paradigm of smart intelligent learning systems a reality for our house, our office, and our world.”

Thomsen’s prediction of the “End of Stupidity” is one of many industry changes the audiovisual industry can expect in the future. Only 520 short weeks are left until 2025, and this year’s keynote message reminds us of the boundless innovations we’ll be utilizing in the not-too-distant future.