Considering a Digital Future

Considering the Digital Future
(A Work in Progress)
March 2014
Monday, October 6, 14

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
-Robert Cannon, Internet law and policy expert

The future is a long way off, and as close as tomorrow.
5 Years
15 Years Beyond
No one knows exactly what it looks like,
but there are some things that are starting to bring it into focus a bit.

The
Internet
of
Things

Internet of Things - from 2009.
“Today's information technology is so dependent on data originated by people that our
computers know more about ideas than things. If we had computers that knew everything there
was to know about things—using data they gathered without any help from us—we would be
able to track and count everything, and greatly reduce waste, loss and cost. We would know
when things needed replacing, repairing or recalling, and whether they were fresh or past their
best. The Internet of Things has the potential to change the world, just as the Internet did.
Maybe even more so.
—Kevin Ashton, That 'Internet of Things' Thing, RFID Journal, July 22, 2009

Internet of Things in 2025
“A global, immersive, invisible, ambient networked computing environment built through the
continued proliferation of smart sensors, cameras, software, databases, and massive data
centers in a world-spanning information fabric.
Information sharing over the internet will be so effortlessly interwoven into daily life that it will
become invisible, flowing like electricity.”
—Digital Life in 2025, Pew Research Center, 2014

Internet of Things in 2014
Self Wearables: Fuelband, FitBit, Medical tracking, quantified-self
Home
Car
Connected Appliances: Nest, GE’s Brillion, Philips Hue, ATT&T, Sonos
4G Connectivity: OnStar, Ford’s Sync, wifi hotspots, remote control

Connectivity is changing
Dial Up - computer terminal
Broadband Wifi - Home networking
4G LTE - Mobile broadband
Google Fiber - 100 Times faster than today’s broadband

Complexity
Privacy Security
Usability

Internet of Things + Big Data (Customer Insight) = Predictive Marketing

Predictive Marketing
The past was brand-centric and the present is consumer-centric, but the future will be predictive
technology-centric.
Marketing’s role will be to convince the predictive engine that it’s this brand and this product that should
be recommended to this user at this specific moment.
Think Google Maps, not for driving your car, but driving your life.

When everything’s predicted,
where is the space for discovery and surprise?
People are tired of being overwhelmed by decisions. They want certain outcomes and want
guidance in achieving them—leaving the details to the alter predictive ego might be an enticing
solution.
But....humans are weird and messy creatures- eliminating choice and perfecting the act of
delivering the right product at the right time at the right place might make life really boring.
This is an opportunity for brands. Those that make space for fun and self expression will be
successful.

Let’s go bigger...
Ray Kurzweil predicts an exponential increase in
technologies like computers, genetics,
nanotechnology, robotics and artificial
intelligence.
He says this will lead to a technological
singularity in the year 2045, a point where
progress is so rapid it outstrips humans' ability to
comprehend it.

Trillions, by Peter Lucas, Joe Bailey & Mickey McManus
We are facing a future of unbounded complexity.
There are already many more computing devices in the world than
there are people. We have literally permeated our world with
computation. But more significant than mere numbers is the fact we
are quickly figuring out how to make those processors communicate
with each other, and with us. We are about to be faced, not with a
trillion isolated devices, but with a trillion-node network: a network
whose scale and complexity will dwarf that of today’s Internet. And,
unlike the Internet, this will be a network not of computation that we
use, but of computation that we live in.

http://vimeo.com/7395079

Trillions - business take-aways
1. Complexity is inevitable, but bad complexity will kill you. Consider how you can foster beautiful
complexity. Nature and evolution are the best teachers.
2. Design is not a paint-job or product styling or user-interface "look and feel." Properly understood,
design is the whole shooting match. If your organization isn't design literate you risk becoming a
dinosaur lumbering among agile predators running around at your feet.
3. Make your products and services human literate. Human beings are vastly more complex, subtle, and
important than machines. We've spent a half-century believing that people should become "computer
literate." That's precisely backwards. Computing should become "human literate."
4. Computing needs to fade into the woodwork so that humans living their lives can come to the
foreground. Think of ways you can use connectivity and computing to hide and tame complexity for
your customers. They don't really want to think about computers, they want to think about doing their
jobs and living their lives.

The Tangible Media Group at MIT's Media Lab - designing the future
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouP9xNujkNo
THAW: screens that interact with each other
https://vimeo.com/105950126
InForm: a dynamic shape display.

Whitney Browne
Group Director, Head of User Experience
whitney.browne@geometry.com

Considering a Digital Future

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