Convergence of New Technologies for Effective Communication | Scott Brown | Convergence Futurist
Welcome to another episode of The Brand Called You a vodcast and podcast show that brings you leadership lessons, knowledge, experience and wisdom from 1000s of successful individuals from around the work. I'm your host, Ashutosh Garg and today I'm delighted and privileged to welcome a very, very accomplished and senior professional from San Francisco, USA, Mr. Scott Brown. Scott, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. This is an honor, I have to tell you, I'm humbled by that. Thank you. Scott is a convergence futurist. He's also
the founder and chief executive officer of MOS Future. So Scott, before we talk of convergence, and you as a futurist, tell me a little bit about your own journey? Well, it's I've always been, I've always been fascinated by communications, I've always been fascinated by the written word. Back when I was a little kid, even, you know, I love journalism and I loved the telling of the stories and I was just thrilled by communications and and what happened with communications. And this is what I'm going to be talking about is the convergence of basically, communications, what it means, what are the changes that are going to happen, and I've always been involved, I went to college, I was on the school newspaper, The Daily Titan at Cal State Fullerton, I've always been doing something with communications. And now I'm taking it to the next level, I don't have a crystal ball. But what I do is I use what I used
in marketing, which is predictive analytics to kind of see what's going to happen in the future, and take all the elements and make it palatable for people to actually absorb this because they're gonna have to it's common. So I've been always involved with communications. In fact, my mom used to tell me stop talking so much, Scott.
Okay, so let's, let's tell move a little bit about your new avatar as a convergence futurist. For my viewers, and listeners tell me what does a convert convergence future is do? Well, by definition, convergence is think about this, you take three rivers, and you bring them into one mighty river. And what you do is you take the power of those rivers, and bring them into something super powerful. If you think about the Web3, which is coming up, it's not here yet, but it is being talked about, and what is it the mystery of that. And it's bringing those elements within Web3 together NFT. what is NFT? You know, tokens. Artificial Intelligence, how
about cognitive, artificial intelligence, thinking, why do things happen, why they happen? These things are actually coming to a head in communication. And I'm the guy who has been studying this since 2016. All elements, but I've even wrote, I wrote a book, all these aspects of artificial intelligence in digital marketing. So I did a lot of research. And I figured this is great. And I actually did involve with a builder, a
web, build a with a builder in Web3, and it's called Mega Varus. And it's Metaverse, and it's a company called Rhino echo studios, a couple of my friends run that company. And I've been helping them connecting, I am with them. Interesting enough, the chief executive Metaverse connector. And I'm not only bringing people to the world as avatars and things like that interesting enough. But I'm also going to be building out a
communications complex to show what people can do what businesses can do in the new in the new internet and the new and the new frontier. Well said, and how do you see the convergence of different technology, which is a Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Internet of Things, Biotech, Metaverse so many things, how do you see them converging and changing the way we live and work in the future? Well, there needs to be somebody who actually does the convergence. You've got separate companies, you've got tokenization. You got, you've got artificial intelligent
companies separate. They're all moving in the same direction, but there's no one that's putting it together. There's no one that's actually looking at the conversion, converging it together, again, to make it palatable when, why corporations, everybody wants to pretty much sell something in the future. And how do you do that? I mean, I guess you could go as an AI company. But if you went with another company as a Web3, platform of web three to actually take it into a Metaverse and have NFT and have NFT that is unregulated that musicians could actually make money with without having a record label, and it's just going to be experience, everything's going to be all about experience. And there's,
and somebody has to pull it together. And so people like, like me, who's a convergent futurist who actually can see it is I'm going to be able to go to boardrooms, I'm going to go to conventions, I'm going to get people see that this is something they can do. Just like, back in the day, when the internet came out. Everybody's loved people said, I've got a brick and mortar business. I'm not gonna go on the internet. What are you crazy? What is the internet? And then Bill Gates. You know, Bill Gates with Microsoft, you actually said he
was quoted in Newsweek, that it was a fad? Well, the internet is not a fad. He even those that now obviously do. And so he's actually very big in the AI world right now, with his company, which is close to $9 trillion in valuation. I mean, it's bigger than some countries. So interesting enough. So that's what that's what happened. The third largest country, not bigger than some country that $9 trillion.
Well, exactly. I mean, it's in Bellevue, Washington, you're in the United States and bigger than I don't think it's bigger than Germany? Well, yes. Absolutely. Yeah. So moving on, Scott, how do you think a lot of these technologies will affect the job market and education? And how can the young actually prepare for these incredible new seismic changes that are happening? You know, it's very interesting that you asked that question, because I wrote a piece in LinkedIn friend of mine, Mike Alton, actually posed that question, in an email to me and to others. What how do you stand in line with a bot? How do you stand in line with artificial intelligence as a young person, and with every, okay, it's not going to replace humans, we create the technology, somebody has to technology, someone has to harness the technology, and someone has to do that. It'll take away some jobs that people have, it'll take away some menial jobs, because we're already seeing that. We're also
seeing it in other technology and other industries in healthcare. Sometimes you can actually have artificial intelligence doing surgery on you, without a human, but guided by, you know, and I don't know that technology very well. But you know, when you see that a surgery is done without, with minimal invasion into the body, that they can actually do that. It's crazy that and that's technology, their boat. So communication is huge now. And it's interesting enough, because
when I was doing my research for my book on artificial intelligence and digital marketing, I realized that my industry is so far behind other industries. We're starting to catch up. And I'm in the perfect position right now to be that convergence futurist. I see the elements. I see. I get fed information. I know what Walt Disney is doing right now. How they're building out their executive team to actually build the metaverse their own stuff, I see what's happening down the road from me in with with Facebook and meta, which is what they're not called. Now, what they're doing. You know, a lot
of people said, Oh, my God, they had all these layoffs. No, they're actually adjusting. They made some mistakes. They're just like any industry, early adaptors make mistakes, they have to adjust him or executive made a few mistakes, he's adjusting fine, everything's gonna be fine. And it'll be interesting because down in Silicon Valley, there'll be a lot of new businesses coming out of these people that were let go from, you know, technology comm. Same thing happening with social media, things are changing. Great in downtown San Francisco at Twitter, who knows how long Twitter is going to be around? I just heard about Pinterest laying off a bunch of people there too. In San Francisco. Everything seems to be happening
in here in San Francisco with kind of the, the ecosystem of the futurist and all these things. So it's, I'm actually excited to to be I just was in San Francisco at my office this afternoon. And just the feeling that you have, it's like this place is for futurists, innovators, and visionaries. So the other other question that is often being asked about a lot of these technologies, Scott is that, you know, we were also worried about privacy and security of our personal data on Facebook. But with all these technologies, everything's out in the open now. How does one handle privacy and security? Well, that's going to actually change some because the European Union is getting involved. We see that happening. We see the
United States of America Congress getting involved with regulating cryptocurrency, just like they do with the banks, everything's going to start getting regular, that you know what, governments are so slow, that these industries have to self regulate. So you have crypto companies that are self regulating. And they actually ask for IDs. I actually personally have five crypto wallets and accounts. There's some that I prefer. I don't I try to stay away from Bitcoin but I do do some things in USDT and also in polygon and theorem as far as NFTs go. So I get involved in that. But to answer
your question deeper on that is, we already gave it up. When we actually signed up with Facebook, and we told them basically lies, you know that everybody lies on their Facebook profile. They embellish what they do with who they are, it's pretty clear. And Google, the next time you change your phone
out, guess what happens? They know in the cloud, everything about you've already given them privacy. If you notice, they actually have you sign every time you go to a website, what happens, Cookies, those cookies, retrace where you been your IP, it's very hard to commit crimes these days because the government FBI, any MAM6 anybody can actually find you by your traces that you left in the internet. We are leaving, we're leaving pieces of us and people can find it no matter what. very interesting. And Scott, you know, as a futurist, you see trends early you understand their potential, and you help others to do the same. helped me understand and all my viewers, how do you as a futurist, understand convergence and give me an example.
Okay, very good question. I have research teams, I have people, a friend of mine is the chief creative officer and a partner at Rhino XR studios. He feeds me information I just saw the other day something amazing. It's a it's an avatar bot. Okay, so now what? Why does somebody need an avatar bot? I mean, it's a woman. And you can actually ask her questions, and she's
lifelike. There's a pause. And then she'll answer the question very intelligently. And it's interesting to see this happening. And getting previews of this, I'll post that. Those types of things that are related to the Web3 and everything that's going on the metaverse itself, building an avatar, how do you build an avatar, it's very interesting, because I know how to do it, I actually learn how to build an avatar. And I also understand to how to do immersive marketing. I've been waiting for a long time to figure out how to actually market that's my background is marketing. And my friend Robert pulled me aside one day, several months ago, and he said, we figured out how we're going to do this. I said,
How are we going to do it? You want to know the secret, because it actually includes the Web2 that's happening right now. And in E-commerce, e-commerce is not going to go away, it's going to be still used, but it has to be used in because the technology is not there to actually do the immersive marketing. So that makes sense. Absolutely makes a lot of sense. And a related question to marketing since you are such a successful marketer. Do you see
any of these technologies coming into branding, marketing and communication? Absolutely. Artificial Intelligence, I wrote a book an e-book, and it's doing pretty well. I getting my royalties in the month. And there are three elements and aspects that are actually involved in that one of them is video, and actually scraping away content for the crawlers for Google, and other search engines. So that's an aspect of that. So that actually works in communications. And in
marketing. Things are going to change though after July 1, the way that marketers actually are being tracked or tracking websites is going to be changed. 80% of searches are done by Google. The next biggest is being at 7%. So what's going to happen is the universal code embedded in websites now for tracking is going to be fading away. And going away at some
point. You can actually run both but they actually replaced it with G4 which is Google's way of capturing experience. How do you capture experience people? And that's what it's all about. It's unregulated environment, and how do you experience things? So before it was key words in marketing and keyword phrases and content, it's still content, it's still keywords. But experience is so much more important now. And
giving the viewer a great experience. And that's how Google is going to start ranking people, businesses on the internet. And a lot of is going to be artificial intelligence built in. You probably see that now and you do a search. It says
Did you mean this or did you really mean that? You see do that now. And it's actually artificial intelligence in digital marketing itself. And then other aspects to our text marketing. That's another technology. 90% of the people, when they get a text message, and they hear that chime, they go to their phone, not so much with email marketing and marketing. So a lot of changes happening. And technology is there. And marketing is just kind of pushing along for that. So interesting. Still do some work in marketing. I own a
couple of marketing firms still, but I'm really focusing of ablate as the convergence. Right. Absolutely. And I also want to get your perspective that based on all these new technologies that are coming into the world, what in your opinion, will have the most significant impact on society in the next 10, 20 years? Wow, I think I think it's going to be communicating, communicating. Okay. Companies, in the business world, companies that communicate best are the ones that win those that actually get their message out there. The best way, the fastest way, the most efficient and the most effective way, are going to win the battles. That's how, in our personal lives, those people in a relationship that actually communicate better with their spouse will have more success in their personal life. It all
comes down to when I was a little kid and communications. And I still think, and studying mass communications and studying interpersonal communications, it comes down to really the humanistic, okay, we've got futuristic things, we have technology. But really what it comes down to is, I'm in San Francisco, you're in India, we're humans. I'm a human,
you're a human. We're communicating right now. And that's amazing. And we're using technology to do that. And we're relating to each other, your primary language is not English. And if we spoke a different language, then we'd have to find a way to actually communicate better. But we found a common ground, we found English to be the common ground, and here we are speaking, and communicating. So I think it's always going to
come down to communicating with other people. Great response. My next question to you Scott is that what ethical and societal challenges do you anticipate that may arise out of all these technologies? And how do we tackle them? These are very good questions. I have tell you, I made me work all night. You know, they sent me the message. All right. I think it comes down to this, I think it really comes down to self regulation, until the government can actually regulate back in the day in the United States, America would before they had FDIC for regulating in the way banking is done. We have like, for instance, in cryptocurrency,
they're self regulating, they're anticipating some, some common regulations. The Internet itself is governed by in the United States, the Federal Communications, and they're getting involved, the FCC is getting involved. Other agencies are getting involved to try to regulate, again, the government slow to to do things, they're always slow. And I think it'll
catch up. And to be honest with you, I think it's good and bad. It's good for governments to be regulating, but it's bad because we need our freedom. We're we're people that need a freedom of expression. And more the government regulates us more
than government taxes as the less we're gonna have our freedoms to do what we want. I mean, I live in America, probably the freest country in the world. That's what we're based on. And we're based on, you know, the pursuit of happiness. Can you imagine that we have a constitution that says, Be happy, right. And the government gives and the government takes, so there's got to be a balance is pretty much what it has.
Wonderful. I have time for three more questions for you. The next question is that, and I've been asked this from, you know, I've spoken to people from all over the world. While you know, countries like the US or the developed world or India, China, etc, have access to a lot of these technologies. Do you think we are creating a world of haves and have nots are creating significant differentiation in countries because of these technologies? Yes, I have to tell you, yes. When I was growing up in the 1950s, well, I grew up in the 60s, but the 50s was the heyday of America after World War Two, and everybody bought a house people. There were people in the military. I grew up in Southern
California, and they had all these homes darting all over the place, military home, but get home, get home, get home and middle class, America was built on the middle class. To answer your question though America is getting so separated, we see, in just in America alone, the differences between the haves and the have nots, we've got a terrible, terrible homeless crisis in America, I see it all the time in the downtown areas, including San Francisco, terrible, you've got wealthy people that are holding on to their wealth. You don't have a lot of people in the middle class. United States is the
leading company, company, country, for upper class, middle class, and lower class and the ability in America to go from lower class all the way to the top, just like Alexander Hamilton, one of our founding fathers. He was a popper, but he actually became the head of the Federal Reserve, and he became a very important figure in the beginnings of our country. That's amazing that a man from from Scotland could actually be an indigent, and then actually rise to where he is. You don't see that anymore. I don't think that's gonna happen. I think the key though, I gotta tell you the key for any country anywhere anyway, is education. When people asked me, Scott, what
should I invest in, because I do some investing, too. I say you know what? Invest in yourself. educate, educate, educate, find out what you're good at. Find out how to educate yourself in that area. And then be your best and find your purpose. And
that's going to make a difference in the world. If everybody actually didn't just sit around like a Tomatons, and sit and watch TV and actually found their purpose in life, we would be a better company, country world, a better world, a better world of people finding their purpose. There are so many people that go to their death, they have no idea where they were even here. That's a pity, that tame and that's our responsibility and use technology to get there fine. But educate, educate, educate online, I actually went to MIT later in life. Four years ago, I got an education at MIT, their
business center at Sloan business school. It was the best thing I ever did. I mean, networking, but MIT people. And I was there. It was a certificate program. I was there for what, nine months. And it was probably the best education
I ever got. So amazing people, amazing things going on on the east coast at MIT. And just pretty close to me here is Stanford University. Education, education, education, always, in
fact, I'm thinking about going to another, maybe an Ivy League school at some point, and doing online courses for that maybe even teach, I'm actually being considered a friend of mine, she is the dean of the communication score, I graduated at Cal State Fullerton, she actually is thinking about getting me involved as a professional professor at Cal State Fullerton in Southern California, to teach young people about what they can do with education, how do they get a job? How can they get a job with my company? Wonderful. And on that note, you know, we've run out of time, so we would love to continue talking. But I was gonna ask you for three lessons. But you've already given me those three
lessons. And those three lessons are invest in yourself, educate, educate, educate, and find your purpose. I think those are such three powerful lessons that you give Absolutely. All my viewers and listeners. Thank you, Scott, for talking to me about your own
journey. Thank you for talking to me at such length. And to me, this has been an absolutely amazing learning session. So I'm sure you will be a fantastic teacher or a professor when you do start to do that. But thank you for talking to me about technology. Thank you for talking to me about convergence. And about futurists. Thank you again. And good luck. Absolutely. All right. Thank you very much. Have a nice day.
Thank you. Thank you for listening to The Brand Called You videocast and podcast, a platform that brings you knowledge, experience and wisdom of hundreds of successful individuals from around the world. Do visit our website www.tbcy.in, to watch and listen to the stories of many more individuals. You can also follow us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Just search for The Brand Called You.
2023-05-10 23:21
