I came across this great blog post on the Centric blog and I had to share and make some comments.
2012 CALLING
“You know the drill. Drag yourself into their office, laptop bag on one shoulder and projector on another, ready to run the latest brag reel and neat little Powerpoint about how you’re gonna cut through the clutter, reach that audience, engage them–
Ah, crap.
I was standing in a large bullpen office area, but it wasn’t like any I’d ever seen before. This one was a collision of cocktail lounge and open-plan office, with lots of low and stylish couches in bright colors, punctuated by comfortable chairs clustered around small tables. If an agency waiting room and cafeteria had staged a hostile takeover of their production floor, this is what it might have looked like.
“Hey, how’d you get in here?” said a guy, flipping a set of ugly designer glasses up onto his forehead.
Additional details assembled: the room was almost empty. A few people sat on couches, working on handsets, or clustered at one of the tables. A group of three people were looking over a packaging design for something that looked like an electric shaver. Flashing messages crawled over the package, like an animated texture on a Second Life prim.
“What year am I in? 2017?”
“2012,” said another guy, walking up to me and the first guy who’d noticed my appearance. He wore the same ugly designer glasses, flipped up on his head. I could see a flicker of images through their dark glass and realized, in that moment, what they were.
“Dataspecs?”
He nodded. “Apple iSee.” …”
First this is the second posting along these lines the first was 1997 Calling where we are taken back in time and presented with the concept of how to pitch to someone back then with what we know now and how different the world has become. This second post pushes us into a mere five years in the future but shows how rapidly things could, and WILL change. Jason is right on the money with the augmented display, I spoke about these back when I was doing Glimpse of Tomorrow and we are on a fast track for changing our interface with the machine. Also the advancements in data visualization are solid as well. Once we move beyond the clunky spaces of our flatworlder interface we will be able to radically shift how we represent and intake data. I am reminded of the first time I read Howard Rheingold’s Virtual Reality and he was telling about the kindergarten children who were doing molecular modeling inside a feed back VR set up at UNC. With out the VR technology, which used force feed back, a visual plus and minus symbols and auditory feedback, that to perform that type of molecular modeling required a Masters if not a PHD before the technology existed. How one advancement in technology made children more powerful than grad students in this particular exercise. Not that that kids understood exactly what they were doing but that they could do it. No you take this example of the visual representation of data that Centric speaks of and imagine what the kindergartener’s will do with that.
I also think the GlobalMarket rating that is alluded to falls right in line with the reputation economy that is coming. The commodity of communal trust and your reputation factor somehow factored into your status in the future of the web is VERY intriguing. So remember Karma its pixelated data set could become a major factor in how we live work and play in the weboshepere of the future. Honestly it all ready does!
Great work Centric I look forward to reading more.