What Chinese Star Sign are you?
I’m a Snake, specifically a Fire Snake (1977).
That’s down to the 60 year cycle of the Chinese lunar calendar, which passes through 5 elemental states (Metal, Wood, Fire, Wind and Earth), and 12 creatures (Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Ram, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and the Pig).
The soothsayers of our modern age have been proclaiming that this year is finally the “Year of the Mobile” for quite some time now. And I for one feel like this has now arrived and is officially here to stay. Perhaps that’s because I’ve been living not in the “the year of the mobile”, but rather “the Decade of the mobile”.
With any technology, by the time it hits the peak point, its value as a marketing medium for innovators and advertisers diminishes. No longer will be people be so wowed and turn their attention to this technology, because it’s plateauing out and the market has hit saturation point.
And what makes something the leading technology of that year? It’s reach? It’s percentage growth? It’s wow factor? The Marketing spend? The amount of noise people make about it? Well, surely all those things and more.
But what about last year, or next year. If one was to chart what has actually happened and see what people have said, what would each year be called in terms of the Technology that’s captured the imaginations of the most people? is 2010 the year of the Tablet? was 2009 the year of the App? that’s a whole post in itself that I’m going to have to come back to.
Now based purely on supposition, inspired somewhat by this post about the future from Mr Russ Tucker, and where we are with devices like smartphones, iPads, and the rate of increase of broadband speed etc., I’m going to throw out some ideas about what future years might be called.
The year of the networked earth – broadband and wifi technology becomes so pervasive that even giant squid at the bottom of the sea and eagles above Everest could log into their gmail if they needed to. The cost of broadband drops through the floor, and the industry becomes state-run whilst some governments try to cling onto the thought that they can control information. This “Dataflow” raises the possibility of every single object on earthbeing able to talk to each other, providing a record of every living and inanimate object in time and space.
The year of the uncomputer – further advances in nanotechnology, superconductors, quantum computing, and micro-kinetic power sources will see high powered computers woven literally into the fabric of daily life. Always on, always plumbed straight into the internet, always working harder to change the way we live. Your socks will recognise when one of their thread’s circuits breaks when they wear out, and send a signal to your watch, which in turn will tell you that it’s time to get some new ones, and order them for you, in the right size, in time for the next time you need to put some socks on (your socks know your daily movements after all).
The year of the HUD (aka the year of the iGlasses, and then the year of the iBall). Apple will invest heavily in Head-Up Display technology and eyeglass nanotechnology, aiming to miniaturise the display device for their now ubiquitous app platform, and beam their products straight onto the lenses of their legion of fanboys. Augmented Reality will become an actual reality, and brands will fight to become the person controlling yours. Location awareness on the micrometre scale means that people will be able to see in the dark, and overlay all the data of the internet on the world around them. Apple dub their first prototype iSee. This is all just a diversionary tactic though, as the real surprise is that Apple’s been investing even more money via a shell company in visual cortex biotechnology, and whilst their competitors have been trying to build rivals to iSee, Steve has had his retinas fitted with a nanochip in an operation akin to laser eye surgery, so that with the blink of the eye, he can switch on his HUD and truly be the first layer between the brain and reality.
The year of the voice – A new generation of oxbridge and MIT students raised on the appalling voice recognition technology used in call centers enhances the existing technology by tapping into the research that’s been carried out on alpha waves and brain patterns during communication. Combining the two by capturing alpha wave radiofrequencies in a new kind of earpiece receiver designed to capture a much wider band of the aural and radiomagnetic spectrum, the voice recognition technology combines the information to capture not just words, but intent as well. A whole new dictionary of emotions is searched alongside the databases of words and sounds giving rise to a whole new industry, “Communication recogniton”.
Suburban Superbia
Disclaimer: Arcade Fire are my favourite bestest best band ever. So I’m likely to be slightly biased about this!
Have you had a go at this yet? Go on give it a go… I really enjoyed it and found the experience quite moving. Given that I had grown up in the relatively protected ‘burbs of Newcastle, the overlaid streetview images fitted very nicely with the sentiment of the song and the album. Not sure how well it would work if you were brought up in Streatham though, or at the other end of the scale, a luxury pile in Monaco.
The whole experience has a feel of a ‘final project at university’ or something (in a very good way), where they’ve just decided to sod the taboo of having multiple pop up windows running at the same time. Ok so it struggled with runtime a bit and made my laptop slow down to a snails pace if I tried to do anything else – but it’s an immersive experience and one that warrants a bit of artistic license.
The things I liked about it;
1. The use of multiple windows
2. The integration of streetview and google maps
3. The ‘unexpected’ 3d animation at the end
4. The text animation/effects on the ‘Postcard’ section
5. The fact that they’re using up loads of your processor power but just don’t care that much – even putting a processor disclaimer warning for you to shut down other programmes. ‘Ok so it might be inconvenient to watch this but hey – who cares!’
It’s also probably one of the most high profile HTML 5 experinces out there at the moment, passing the test as an interactive experience, although I think I’ll reserve judgement on the technology for a while yet! Would love to see more HTML5 experiences like this – send them to me if you have any…