This sounds like a story lede so inflammatory and sensational that it wouldn’t even make it onto the local TV news. Yet, statistically, its just a fact of life that many, many people who use Facebook will die this year.

Nothing sinister is at play. Remember, as investors pile millions into the company with the big blue F, they back up the soundness of their reasoning by telling themselves that there are nearly 600 million active users of Facebook. That’s a pretty significant population – twice the size of the United States. And when you talk populations that big, you can make predictions based on public health statistics, which is what Fast Company has just done:

It’s a question of percentages. Sure, there is mortality rate of just 0.100% for people between the ages of 20 and 24, but when you start talking about massive sample sizes, that’s going to be a number that sounds shocking – 22, 640.

Then again, let’s think this through – how many people who use doorknobs will die this year? How many people who leave this mortal coil in 2011 will have consumed PEANUT BUTTER at least once in the past 12 months. IT COULD BE THOUSANDS. MILLIONS!

The real point is that Facebook is reaching a scale at which it become a public utility. Skype – which has around 27 million users at any one moment, users that pay nothing – released a profuse apology for letting their largely free service go down for a few hours. Now, as someone who remembers a time when rural areas like where I grew up only got one TV station in dubious quality, I find it fascinating that CEOs now apologize when they cease giving away free intra-planetary telecommunications for 24 hours. The world sure has changed. Social media is not consider a frivolous entertainment,  it is more like water, sewer and electricity – people expect it to just be there.

Facebook is getting more publicity that the average religious deity because they are hip and relevant. Then again, think of the hipness and brand awareness of your typical utility company. Does anyone write feverish, excited prose about the new business model of the water company in your city? Apple CEO Steve Jobs has just taken another medical leave of absence, and markets are holding their breath. When was the last time that happened for the CEO of an electricity distribution company? Who can name a SINGLE natural gas provider?

Utilities tend not to stay on the front page forever.

First, a headline from the Motley Fool: Cisco Taps Google for an Office Assault. Sounds serious. We think it is, too, and for a variety of reasons.

You may notice that the tech sector has been experiencing a wave of mergers and acquisitions, all angling to find a future of profitability in a world where our information needs all converge into multi-use devices and mobile infrastructure. Whether it’s smart phones, search, or telepresence, it seems that when one megacompany is involved, they are ALL involved.

Just consider the short- and long-term implications of the Cisco Cius – a Google Android-run tablet computer that will allow entreprise-grade video, video and data collaboration.

Business-wise, does your company just specialize in one form of telecommunication? You had better have a serious commitment to a special niche – finance, healthcare, defense, or other – because the mass market will be eaten by some very, very large players.

In terms of business communications, email, phone, and video will finally come together into one smooth package. Meetings will be infused with all kinds of rich content. Quick email messages (so easy to misconstrue!) will likely be replace by short video bursts in which your facial expression will be transmitted along with your words! Collaboration between colleagues around the globe will finally become easy enough to make telecommuting more of a reality than ever.

In this is just one device – think of what lies ahead in the next ten years, both for the companies involved and for those who will use these products and services.

Tell me that when every kid has one of these that education won’t change forever.

Also, let me know how colleges will keep charging $1000 per semester for books when no printing is required.

This is the stuff that makes you say, “Awesome, I think the future just arrived.”

Kno Movie from Kno, Inc. on Vimeo.

With a hat tip to August Jackson, Lloyd’s of London schools us further in the outlandish corporate risk due to the telephone.

Had I not seen this, we might have started using such dangerous technology recklessly.

I loved this graphic, picked up on Twitter. (Click to enlarge) Not sure who Bozarth is, but it’s a clever comparison of social media to the original electric social medium, the telephone.

A few observations, picked up from our years of discussing innovative technologies and new social trends with leaders:

• When people say “It can’t be done,” they usually mean, “We can’t control what will be done with it.” Control, or more accurately the perception of control, is considered FAR more important than creating the forward motion of innovation. Control is almost always the most important value in a large bureaucracy,  more important than revenue generation and even profit.

• Most new communication technologies are tested out informally before they become official way of doing “work,” and thus are usually classified as “fooling around, wasting time.” Consider that back in 1996, in the days before Competitive Futures, while using the Internet to research competitors for my then-CEO, I was taken aside by a junior manager who accused me of “playing video games at work.” The video game in question, incidentally, was the EDGAR database of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

• Most every generation underestimates the tech savvy of the generation succeeding it, while simultaneously overestimating the complexity of the next generation of technology. Back in 2000, we did a landmark study of the future of information technology for the construction industry in which we predicted the increased use of cell phones, laptops, GPS, and electronic building plans. Many of the older executives rejected the notion that “construction guys” would be using “the Internet and computers” by 2010. Two assumptions here were faulty: that computer skills were the dominion of the educated, and that “computer” meant “giant, clunky desktop” instead of a smart phone or Toughbook. Today, even the poor kids have Playstation and cell phones, and intrinsically understand electronic menus and text messaging. The generation is more tech savvy, and the tech is simpler.

• The argument of late technology adopters is usually predicated on the idea that they have a CHOICE as to whether the new technology impacts their business. If history is any guide, you can either adopt major technology shifts or wait to see what your competitors will do with the technology. If this is still a question in your mind, why don’t you ask the music industry what it’s like to deny the inevitable.

As such, Competitive Futures is bullish on the long-term impact of social media. It seems inevitable for a host of technological and sociological reasons.  Pause for a moment to consider its impact on your customers and your internal management.

Yes, it sounds dorky, but these are the weak signals that portend the coming revolution in telepresence.

Will h.264 prevail? What about Ogg Theora? This may seem like a strange debate for anyone not deeply involved in technology analysis for enterprise-quality video, but consider Cisco’s recent purchase of Tandberg, Logitech’s purchase of strange bedfellow LifeSize – there is a clear megatrend for video becoming a mission-critical technology for running businesses and keeping in touch with friends.

But many chess pieces are about to be moved. Check it out.

Courtesy of Forrester Research, a great graphic describing the innovation of the music industry, from 25 billion euros in 2000 down to 10 billion euros today.

Competitive Futures has been using the music industry as the poster child for strategic disruption since the beginning of the decade. I remember discussions with music executives around the turn of the millennium. Mostly, they were caught in the “moral” indignation of “kids” “stealing” music when they should be paying $18 (closer to $30 in Europe!) for static music media.

My favorite discussion was with an industry exec who attempted to sell me on the notion that “Compared with going to the movies, which is $8, a CD is a great investment because you can play it again and again. It probably should be $100 or something.” Nice. Try.

The conclusion: just because you don’t want to face reality doesn’t make it have less impact.

The future of video conferencing: having a physical representation of you in a room, a mannequin with your face digitally projected onto it.

Creepy? Uh, yes, that’s a word that comes to mind. But people in a few years may look for all kinds of ways to enhance long-distance communications, and this may not be as disturbing.

In the meantime, it’s an interesting technology in a phase of rapid growth.

Further to our series of “Forecasting Works” blog posts, dig these ads for AT&T from 16 years ago, 1993. They forecast, based on their own knowledge of technology and some educated guesses:

• E-books
• Telepresence
• EZ-Pass digital toll collection
• Online concert ticket sales
• In-car GPS navigation

Were they completely accurate in these visions? Not entirely, but you’ll have to admit that it is all frighteningly close.

They engaged in a rational process of thinking about the impact of current trends, and it helped light the way.

You can do likewise.

Many people on the Interwebs are becoming exercised about the new terms of service of Facebook:

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.

On one hand, this does sound a bit like King Henry VIII on The Tudors, granting himself powers over all matters royal, legal, theological and temporal and starting a new church all at once. This blog, for example, gets posted to my personal Facebook account: can Facebook now make derivative products of ALL futurists on Facebook, print a compendium of foresight blogs? (Who knows, maybe it would be cool?) But it sounds like a lot of power.

On the other hand, I saw one young person comment, “You probably should expect anything you put on the Internet to be available for free, forever.” This is probably the more rational approach.

As Gerd Leonhard is fond of saying, “Compensation, not control.”

Gerd Leonhard is one of the hardest working guys in the world right now, criss-crossing the globe and trying to figure out the future of making money off music, books, movies, and other content. (Guys like me really appreciate that!)

He has noticed that the “sue the customer” trick didn’t work (ahem) and that a new business model for content is badly needed.

Here, his mantra is “compensation, not control.” Watch the whole thing:

If we are on the brink of a Great Depression, the run up to it looks a little unusual:

AT&T said Wednesday that it activated 1.9 million iPhone 3Gs in the fourth quarter with 40 percent of those activations representing new customers.

In the back half of 2008, AT&T activated more than 4.3 million iPhones (statement). AT&T also noted that it iPhone customers deliver higher revenue per user and have lower churn rates.

via » AT&T: 1.9 million iPhones activated | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com.

Sounds awesome.

These are the kinds of cool things you can do when your country is:

a) small

b) starting an infrastructure from scratch after Soviet occupation

According to Raul Kaidro, spokesman of the SK Certification Center, which issues personal ID cards in Estonia, security will not be an issue as the cell phone, “is the most secure way to authenticate digital signatures.”

What does this mean for large countries for whom this would be punishingly expensive and/or difficult? As American, I feel like we won’t win the science fair this year…

Since they began to find profitable applications ten years ago, it has been fascinating to the see the degree to which RFID tags are being used in a variety of convenience-enhancing applications. Don’t stop for toll roads! No need to swipe your card! Just get near enough for us to scan you, and you’re on your way

.Naturally, this has an unintended consequence: human being are generating massive amounts of data about their behavior, from travel patterns to shopping preferences. These data are being collected by central databases, both by governments and private entities. Free democracies have certain implicit and explicit expectations of privacy, but we are at the point of unprecedented technological power in tracking human beings and most everything they do.

Dialogue is in order – we need to decide what we feel about this, what we expect; our values of right and wrong.

Some have already started: France’s Le Figaro newspaper has an article this morning about how the rail company is sounding the alarm that it cannot necessarily guarantee “anonymous” travel when using the regular RFID-chipped NaviGo pass.

This has led to a higher paid, but anonymous version of the card called “Navigo Decouverte.” But also it leads to a polemic. Is our privacy ours, or must we purchase it just as we purchase other goods and services? Are our laws made with enough foresight to handle the challenges these technologies may pose to liberty and open society?

It’s nice to see that France is paying attention. Let’s dialogue!

Man, growing up as a musician in rural Vermont, I would have LOVED to interface with creative musicians around the world. It would have been literally unthinkably cool. Just ran across this company/website/organization called Digaband, which claims to want to replace record companies. Great that they want to increase traffic and fanbase – everybody wants more exposure. But speaking as the former resident of a rural area, it would have been great to simply interact with other people trying to make their way as professional musicians.

In a world with some questionably depressing updates, these are the kinds of developments that tell you ever better stuff is on the way.

More insightful stuff from Gerd Leonhard on the future of media, which is useful the day after the Tribune Company melts down.

Great point: water is technically “free” in the developed world, but the global water industry is worth $100 billion, four times the size of the music industry.

Just because a business model blows up doesn’t mean the service no longer has billions of dollars in value

Click To Play

Further to discussing the future of Net Neutrality, Yochai Benkler over at Talking Points Memo thinks that part of Obama’s economic stimulus package could feature fiber to the home, an investment in infrastructure that goes beyond new roads, bridges and power plants.

If America is going to government spending to power out of a Depression, this may be a likely scenario. FDR invested in the industrial economy to ease the depression of the 1930s; Obama could invest in the knowledge economy.

This could change the business dynamic in telecom considerably.

Declan McCullagh at CNET posts an interesting bit of news that is of interest to those concerned with Net Neutrality debate and also those D.C. policy dorks who love terms like “astroturf payola punditry.” (Incidentally, that’s me, and everyone within five blocks of our office)

The story is actually about how a number of telecom companies have been paying a certain D.C. pundit to slam Google’s pursuit of Net Neutrality, arguing that Google (and, unmentioned, the 96% of the planet which uses Google) doesn’t pay their fair share.

The arguments are less of concern to me than the fact that I have been hearing about this topic for years now. It has slipped below the radar, but clearly, given the lobbying efforts going on, somebody sure thinks it’s important. So it bears keeping an eye on in the years ahead.

Any bills coming up in the new Congress?