Category Archives: Blogs

What will global governance look like in the future? How are we going to organize ourselves? Westphalian sovereignty was a terrific concept when it drew to an end a hundred years of religious war and bloodshed in Europe. But it is no longer a fully sustainable idea.

The litany of the ways the nation-state is under assault is familiar: Globalized economics, finance, supply chains and communications limit states’ control over their borders. Disease, climate related threats and ideas of all sorts cross borders with impunity. The private sector and the super rich set agendas and have control over some of our public goods, especially information.

To make matters more complicated, while our global challenges demand greater trust and cooperation across borders and between different kinds of actors, power is devolving to the level of a single individual, creating many more actors whose trust and cooperation is required. If I can do genetic experimentation in my basement, communicate with the..

Can the tourism industry create the perfect algorithm? One that precisely predicts where a traveler wants to go and what she wants to do when she gets there? Asked to consider this question recently on behalf of the Vixouze Discussions , an annual conference on the future of tourism, my short answer was, Yes.

Predictive analytics in tourism are animated by “recommender systems” which use either the prior online behavior of an individual or a group of individuals who are like each other to ‘predict’ what we would like. Netflix, Amazon and TripAdvisor are examples of companies that use the traces of our digital behavior to predict what else we will like. Leaving aside costs and ethics for the moment, there is no theoretical barrier to more and more nuanced personalization as we all leave more and more digital traces behind. If I have already shared a preference for medium-firm pillows in my hotel room or beach vacations, a recommender system can call out more of the same.

Tourism recom..