Interviewer: How can methodologies in future studies be effectively applied to the field of communication?

Bugge Holm: Well, I think there's a lot of different angles in that question. One thing is a trend, and another one I work very much with is megatrends. For me, trends are very short term and megatrends have a longer perspective. But I think we need to have a structured dialogue about the things that will come in the future and not just seeing what's right in front of us, also in the longer perspective. So, I think the futurism and megatrends and applied futurism can organize that discussion. So coming back to the starting point so we can actually be prepared for different worlds where the audience is seeing different media, different platforms, the business models are changing and so on. So how can we lean into that future? Going back to my talk about the possible futures, we need to know the plausible futures, if you're not able to define that, we are not able to define what is our preferable futures either, because otherwise it will just be a big blur. So we need to do the groundwork to lean into the future.

Interviewer:  As a senior futurist, what key trends do you currently observe in the intersection of communication and technology?

Bugge Holm: I think that there are many. I see a demographic shift where especially the younger generation will be using different platforms than the ones we use, and that will apply to different media. There will be a change in the stakeholders that will be the gatekeepers for the media. I mean, public service media and printed press, as we know it, won’t be as important as now for the younger generation. And it doesn't mean that public service media is out of date. It just means that we need to lean into new platforms and learn a new language. For instance, should we create content from a European perspective? If I had a paper or a public service TV station, should I go into YouTube for example, or should I not? And I mean, it's totally up to the media itself to decide that, but I think they will need to have a qualified discussion about what are the pros and cons, the progress and drivers about the choice and the future direction that they're going.

Interviewer: Let's talk about scenarios. Could you elaborate on the types of scenarios your team is developing on studying related to the future of communication?

Bugge Holm: One of the scenarios we've been working with very much about is AI. A lot of things are about AI at the moment. Everybody is looking into AI because it's such a big uncertainty, and I think it's very interesting to see whether AI will mean that content is still the king. Another scenario is actually that content isn't king anymore, that creation is the king, and it's two different scenarios. Whether it will be just a big mass of content, and the gatekeeping will be the curation and the platform, or whether people will actually still favor the good content, good writing. And then, of course, another scenario that we've been working with is the adaptation of AI. Will people accept AI or will they not accept it? Will it be okay for people to read an article being written by AI or not? So basically, we are trying to figure out at the moment where that's heading. We see different areas around the world where there are more adaptations of AI, Asia, for instance.

But even in Europe, especially the younger generation, seems to lean into AI and AI generated content in a manner that we didn’t expect it. So I think a lot of the challenge right now is for the media industry and especially for the executives, to imagine how AI created content can be a part of it, because we have this legacy of thinking that human made content is like the right content, and AI generated content must be some kind of fake. Synthetic equals bad. Good, bad. And one thing is now, because right now we can actually do pictures and writings in an okay way with AI. But what about in a year? What about five years? What about in ten years? Maybe it will be really good. Will AI generated content be even better content than human made content? Should we label AI generated content, or should we maybe label human made content in the future? Different scenarios we need to address and talk about and build scenarios for so we can make qualified decisions.

Interviewer: Talking about AI, how do you see AI transforming the landscape of communication in the coming years, but especially considering your involvement in studies related to AI and metaverse?

Bugge Holm: I think if you should start with the metaverse, that's the big point at the moment. The metaverse is very alive. The metaverse in Mark Zuckerberg's direction might be dead, but the metaverse as a direction between this merge between the physical and the digital is very much alive. Call it spatial internet, immersive internet, metaverse, same, same but different. So the direction is very much alive. And I think the key component in the metaverse is AI. I mean, there won't be any metaverse, spatial internet, immersive internet without AI as a factor, even as the essential driving mechanism in that new world. AI will be the one who generates content, but it will also be the curator of content, and it will be soon. It will also be the one that creates content on content. So it will create a lot of synthetic content. So we have this black box problem. That is a challenge because we are so used to, in media context, that we can verify everything, so we can go back to the source, we can verify it. But very soon, with AI created content, it will be very hard to understand what's actually going on in the black box, and that will challenge the way we are doing journalism and creating content not only with AI. We have a lot of AI rights problems, challenges at the moment. I personally think in a few years we will have solved all those kinds of problems. So I think it's just a blurry moment in time. But it will be a problem that AI creates content out of AI created content, that it will be hard to track it. So we humans will be in the loop? Will we trust it? We need to discuss that.

Interviewer: Still talking about metaverse, and given your leadership role in Nordic Metaverse Summit. What potential do you see for the metaverse in revolutionizing communication strategies?

Bugge Holm:  It’s the combining of all this technology that creates a lot of possibilities, because it can do things faster, better, cheaper, more creative. So in many ways it's a huge new tool that we got so that we need to play around to find out what we can actually do with it. I just heard President Obama was actually on a podcast called decoder last week, a very interesting podcast. And he compared it to the time when we got electricity in the cities. So we did have light before the electric, but suddenly you got electricity that we can generate and not only light up the cities in the same way we could before, we could also build factories and stuff like that. And we are in this moment of time that we have this new superpower we need to address and find out how to use. And then we need to find out whether we should be a part of this superpower, should it be something that is only for the US to build, or for China or for Meta? I think Meta is also very important because they're putting so much energy into AI and the media industry. So we need to find a way to be on the forefront. And I think that at least with the letter today, we were discussing very much whether we should be proactive. I think we should be prepared. I think being prepared is the best thing you can do at the moment, because then we don't have to be normative and decide anything, but you have to build a capacity to be prepared for whatever comes to you.

Interviewer: What are the biggest challenges you foresee in the evolution of communication mediums and methods?

Bugge Holm: I think the biggest problem now is that the media system is burning down. So since everything is so challenging, we tend to try to fix things on a short notice. We are firing journalists. We are firing the people doing the graphics. And of course we are trying to find a way to save journalists. But I think it's very important to have a focus on the longer term perspectives, because I don't think it's about saving journalists. I think it's about saving journalism. And I think that we need to… (it doesn't matter whether of course, you can write that, but but in my perspective, without getting quoted for it), I mean, it doesn't matter if 20% of the journalists are getting fired is all that matter is that the media is still there and saved in a ten year, 20 years perspective because it would be a dark future if we don't have any European media in the future. So we need to find a way to build a new ecosystem that can save that.

Interviewer: And in this new ecosystem, how do you think digitalization, and particularly blockchain and immersive technologies will influence future communication frameworks?

Bugge Holm: I don't know, but I know that the younger generation that is coming up, I mean, everybody is talking about the Gen Z's now, but even the younger ones, the Alpha Generation, they are here right now. We're having this discussion when old men like me are meeting whether we should lean into the digital world or the immersive world or the metaverse, but they're growing up in a world where they have never experienced anything less. So for them, it's not about having it, because it is not possible to get out of this digitalization thing. They have been born into it, and I think that to reach out for the future generations we have to build a new foundation and the foundation will be digital, and we need to learn a language for that. We need to adjust our business for that. It doesn't mean that there won't be many seniors because there will. I mean, in many years to come, there will be an older generation that will heavily use print media flow TV as we know it. There will be room for that for the next many years, but they will die in the end, and then the new generation will come out and they will be digital first.

Interviewer: Let's switch to future driven sports and entertainment innovation. Yes, getting apart from journalism, considering your experience with the center for Future Driven Sports and Entertainment Innovation, how do you predict sports and entertainment will evolve in terms of communication and audience engagement?

Bugge Hokm:  It's very funny because that's actually the way I've started working with the media, and I think a good way to look at those new things is to look at sports, right? We are seeing the big platforms now, buying up sports in a manner that we didn't comprehend a few years ago. We see Apple, we see Amazon going into buying global rights. And I often discussed this topic, especially when you have localized media saying we have the right to show the Premier League and our platform in the Nordic countries and suddenly there's a global media platform coming and buying the global rights. And there is a changing ecosystem. And sports in many ways is on the forefront of that, because people are very much focused and buying into media because of sports, they're not buying for news, they're buying for sports. Sports is actually one of the things that one wants to spend money on so in many ways, sports is a primer for what to become in the future of many of the other verticals in the media industry. Because sports are so popular and sports is the one thing that people want to pay about. I mean, we see Saudi Arabia buying a lot of sports, football clubs in Europe. To buy us the same. And we're looking into the same in the media industry in Europe. I mean we will also see Saudi Arabia investment in European media organizations. We just saw Saudi buying a magazine from the US, for example. So, this is actually the mainstream media industry. And sports has a lot to learn about the rotation and the moment, because I think one thing that we are so much talking about having and preserving a European media industry, but we also need to talk about our future, a possible future where maybe Saudi Arabia could own 20%, 10% of the European media industry and been colonizing that. So, I mean, there's a lot of, again, uncertainties. And that comes back to the role of being prepared. We need to be prepared for a massive shift where a lot of media organizations are lacking money, and Saudi Arabia will buy them because they will have a lot of money. Will we allow that? Will we allow that on the European Commission on a state level? I don't know.

They also buy our players sometimes like our Barcelona players. I mean, they actually started up investing in the clubs in Europe, but now they're trying to take the players away and build the leagues or their own there. And everybody was saying after we had the World Cup in Qatar that that will be the end of it. And then we have Saudi Arabia coming up. And everybody is saying it will stop and we'll go back to the old normal, but it won't. I mean, it won't go back to the old normal. There's a new normal. That's a new normal. And we need to navigate this new normal with global stakeholders. That will mean, they will do differently in sports, but they will also do differently in the media than we are used to.

Interviewer: So just getting to the end of this interview, let's talk about education and communication technologies. From your point of view, how will emerging technologies reshape communication in the education sector?

Bugge Holm:  Well, first of all, we need to rethink our education. I mean, we need to right now and especially in traditional journalism, think about the sectors that are around the media industry. And stop thinking in a world that no longer exists. So it takes a long time to have an education, to develop a curriculum. And I think, for example, I've been working quite heavily with AI education and curriculums about AI education lately. And I think there's a lot of uncertainty about what AI is good at. I mean, two years ago, everybody was talking about how we should put a lot of those new AI educations in the curriculum. But now we see that AI is getting very creative itself, very good at replicating pictures and wording and movies and so on. So I think the challenge now is to rethink how our education and the role with tech and especially AI is today on this, like on this short term, but also in five, ten years, because a student that will go into a five year education plan, I mean, in five years, even for me, it's hard to imagine just how the world will look in the media industry. So it's a big challenge. We need to address that very much. Otherwise we will educate them with tools that are no longer useful. So I think it's a huge challenge for the education systems, for the universities, for the teachers to navigate these uncertainties. It was very easy back in the days. You could predict what kind of tools they were gonna need. But now, we really don't know and I think we should be way more open about what the students actually need.

Interviewer: And just to finish, our last question, can you share insights or examples of innovative communication strategies that may become prominent in the near future?

Bugge Holm: One thing I've been working with is a scenario in which, in the media, the screen disappears. As an example, the EU Commission has just introduced the AI act coming into effect 2025. But we also see that the first products are already coming out, for instance the human AI pin, or the Rewind AI. So we are seeing the first tools that are coming out before anticipated. Personally, I think there will be room in ten years for our screen in media and communication, as well. But there will probably also be room for different tools that will totally disrupt the media ecosystem, as it is the case of the human AI pin. For instance, it was 12 years ago that we got the first iPhone. And I think that we need to start talking about a media world where maybe only the younger generation doesn't have a screen. How do we actually lean into that? What will it look like? Who will be the gatekeeper of truth, and so on? So many mind blowing things that we need to address. And I mean, again, I think it's very important to say that there are chances that the human AI pin will be the one tool. It's maybe not so big, but after that there will not be a product but a range of products that will try to break the point. And I think we we need to be prepared for that because otherwise we are fucked. We can’t say that, but we are not preparing ourselves. And it's mind blowing just to think about the media world without screens. I think it's very interesting just to think about it. It makes my mind explode.