The Future is almost now..
There were a few quite formative books and films, which framed my vision for the future of Technology, Media and Entertainment. (Recruiters and an analysts now with the addition of Internet refer to this sector as TIME) Three books in particular, Bruce Sterling’s Islands in the Net,
At this years CES I saw the beginnings of the world outlined in these books and films, exciting, inspiring and terrifying all at the same time. I think the press and certainly my friends were unanimous in what they considered the show’s biggest innovation – Panasonic’s 150” plasma television. No typo, this is one big television. As I gazed in awe I could only think to myself, man I need a bigger house.
In all seriousness however, there was something far more interesting about screens and the CES show. They are simply everywhere! The diaspora of plasma, LED and soon OLED (more on that later) means every company had a zillion displays of all different sizes, from the Samsung (I’ll blog about that some other time, the most beautiful almost jewellery like digital watch I’ve ever seen which has a Dick Tracy phone built-in which in combination with a handy Bluetooth headset caused me serious lust) watch and keychain photo screens (smallest was an inch square and ¼ inch thick!). Wifi enabled picture frames, every one of the Televisions at the very least has HPNA and many even have browser’s built in. I was struck that the world which my former business partner, Schematic founder and likely the most famous UI designer alive Dale Herigstad helped imagine with Spielberg in Minority Report where screens are everywhere giant, connected and aware of your presence (this last part is still not there yet, but the rest is there) With OLED technology, demo’d all over the show, the organic diodes can be aerosoled and sprayed – paint-like on a wall – coming to a London studio apartment near you in 3-5 years. The wall screen in Neuromancer is on the horizon.
What struck, however, was that while the screens have migrated all over the house and office, and they are getting bigger, smaller and network aware and even connected - that the services and experience frameworks are quite nascent. Microsoft, with it’s windows media center + extender technology seem to be one of the few standards in the space, Sony has a framework demonstrated in the new PS3, but really for a consumer to buy one of these devices, go home and instantly be able to access all of their movies, music, photos, etc. across all of the screens still requires at least an IT guy maybe two. The focus has been on the device capability but not on the digital DNA/framework - across manufacture and platform – to create a consistent simple intuitive experience. They seem to have forgotten the lessons of the past - everyone trying to control and drive the user experience rather than creating a simple intuitive open framework to enable consumers to get what they want, when they want, where & how.
The future is almost here, but we have a lot of worked to go on its user experience.
