by Mawer Investment Management, via The Art of Boring Blog
This week we learned that financial ecosystems may be more at the mercy of the laws of biology than of physics; how long it takes for digital tech innovations to really become mainstream; that since the early 20th century we’ve been rather creative at forecasting the future; and, that China is heading towards a cashless society.
Enterprising Investor – The adaptive markets hypothesis: a financial ecosystems survival guide
A helpful framework for thinking of the market—“When I realized that financial decision making was simply one aspect of human decision making, I [started] thinking more broadly about how people make decisions and how we model them, both analytically and biologically.”
The Wall Street Journal – The Cashless society has arrived – only it’s in China (video: 10:35 min; article subscription only)
Even panhandling has gone cashless. The rise of mobile payments raises some intriguing questions: what impact does this have on Visa/MasterCard, or the banks? What other kinds of innovations could happen as a result? What if a system like WeChat emerged in North America?
MIT Technology Review – The seven deadly sins of AI predictions
A well-written reminder on how we can get carried away with our AI and robotics predictions. The world is not as digital as we may think—these innovations take a lot longer to become ubiquitous.
World Economic Forum – Life in 2018, as predicted by people in 1918
Speaking of technology predictions, a great and grounding retrospective on our attempts at forecasting over the years—Whale-Buses, anyone?
Also, keep an eye out for flying cars this year as predicted in 1882!
This post was originally published at Mawer Investment Management
