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The Best of Future Conscience 2009 – 2012

Written on August 27, 2012 in Communications & Technology, Lifestyle & Society, Religion & Spirituality, Science & Environment

Augmented Reality concept (image by Electric Images, Flickr, CC)

It’s quite strange to think that Future Conscience has now been running for three years. Over 150,000 words through almost 200 posts, there’s a lot here that visitors to the site just won’t come across unless it happens to be through a specific search term. To recognise three years of writing the blog I thought I would highlight some of my favourite posts, the ones that I would hope everybody who visits would read (and share!) and that highlight the tone and purpose of the blog the best.

I’ve left out some of the most recent ones, which are easily found, and also those in the most popular posts list to the right (that Top 10 Futurist Films post has seen so many views I can’t see anything toppling it). Some posts that I’d like to include here I haven’t to keep the length manageable, so there’s still some hidden gems for you to find if you hunt through the archives (or the random links that pop up on the sidebar).

If there’s only one post that you share with your friends and followers – please do make it this one. Celebrate our third anniversary and help spread the word with these: the best of Future Conscience 2009 – 2012!

Society 3.0 – Where all of us have a voice (2009)

One of the first posts on the blog. The early posts show a far less nuanced writing style, and I think also are a bit too full of naivety. But with this one I think the groundwork was laid for what the blog was to become. Starting originally as a daily blog highlighting futurist news with an ethical slant, it was here that I started to show the social commentary and personal philosophy that would become the norm. For that reason alone it’s an important one to have on this list…even if I cringe every time I read posts from around this time.

Augmented Reality: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (2009/10)

I like this series of posts because it takes a look at one particular technology – augmented reality – and approaches it from multiple angles. All technology can be used in both positive and negative ways, and you should really do a post like this for every futurist projection. It’s also a post that I neglected to conclude for quite some time, so the final part shows quite a different writing style to the earlier two.

Ethical Blogging Series (2009)

One of the early topics covered was this ongoing series of posts on ethical blogging. What does it mean, how can you do it, why would you want to? Blogging is one of those mediums where people don’t really consider much how to respect intellectual property, their readership and the ethics of monetisation, and the role that a good ethical foundation can play not only in the topics that you write about but in the practical structure of the blog and how it’s put together.

Tweetivism: Social Justice or Internet Lynch Mob? (2009)

Continuing with the themes of social commentary and longer posts, I’m quite proud of this post because it highlights an issue which has become increasingly important in the years following. It’s nice to feel somewhat ahead of the curve, and it wasn’t until a year or so later that editorials started cropping up regularly in the mainstream media on this very topic. By the way – how ugly are Google Ads? Bleh…glad I stopped using those.

[Review] Radio Free Albemuth: Into the Mind of Philip K Dick (2010)

Radio Free Albemuth: Interview with Writer/Director John Alan Simon (2012)

If I had to choose a favourite post, most of the time I’m going to choose my initial review of Radio Free Albemuth. Primarily because of the absolutely surreal experience that I had on the day (given in full detail in the post), but also because it opened up a dialogue with the film’s director and producer which a year later meant that I was able to meet them in person to discuss the movie and also score an interview for the blog. Being such a huge fan of Philip K Dick, I felt priviliged and honoured to be part of the roll-out of this film in whatever small way. Here’s hoping it gets a wider release very soon!

The Rabbi & The Golem: A Parable of Synthetic Life (2010)

Musings Along the Way: 40 Spiritual Aphorisms (2010)

Why We Should Not Worship God (2011)

The parable is the only piece of fiction on the blog, I really enjoyed writing it and I do feel it’s important for people to know that the blog comes from a place of personal contemplation and spiritual growth. The aphorisms were my attempt at conveying information in a symbolic manner, and the style is one that is being seen less and less these days. They give a direct view into the core of my psyche at the time of writing, which makes them the most personal post by far and is also why I present them without comment. The final piece of this spiritual trilogy is a misunderstood one, and one of those that were I to edit now I would change quite a bit to make a few things more clear, but for the record is a deeply theistic piece. These three represent the cornerstone of the blog and its ethos.

The Shifting Paradigms of Alternate Reality Gaming (2010)

Another one of my favourite posts, mainly because of the paranoid noir-like world that it portrays. Alternate reality gaming is something that seemed poised to take off in a big way, and although to a certain extent it has simmered down recently I still think it’s an entertainment medium that has a lot to offer in merging gaming, social activity and the ‘real’ world into a wonderful cocktail that enables personal enjoyment, inspiration and growth. But there were aspects of the scene that were showing some very worrying tendencies, and the ability for this medium to be abused for violent or manipulative ends should not be overlooked.

10 Sectors to Watch for the Next Decade (2009)

7 Random Predictions for the Future (2010)

5 Predictions for the Next 5 Years (2012)

Timeline: The Future of Videogames (2012)

Futurists are supposed to make predictions, it’s part of the genre and it forces us to put our necks on the line. Here are some prediction posts I’ve made over the last three years. In many ways I think I’m not a terribly imaginative futurist, but these attempts at least show that I’m willing to try! At the very least, if you make enough predictions then some of them are going to be right…

Your Life: The Videogame (2011)

Not everything on Future Conscience has to be so serious and sombre, and so I’m picking this post to highlight one of the more light-hearted explorations of future technology. The gamification of life is a prediction that I stand by strongly, and is also one that I’m quite looking forward to. We’ve only just begun to develop ways to incorporate our technology, our sense of entertainment and our daily lives; and it’s a sector that is going to see rapid growth over the next decade with some completely unexpected results.

Millionize Your Lashes: The Impossible Dream of Cosmetics (2011)

Possibly the post that comes closest to being a pure rant, but this is another one that I’m very pleased with and also feel a certain degree of pride over. The disingenuous world of advertising is an issue that really upsets my sense of autonomy, as it is founded on a notion of manipulation, manufacture of desire and an underlying message that chips away at self-confidence. I’m proud of this post not because of its content, per se, but because it comes up so highly when searching for the product mentioned.

It still makes me chuckle to think that at some point there was likely a marketing meeting at one of the world’s largest cosmetics companies (L’Oreal) with people getting pissed off that this post was ranking so highly on Google searches for their latest product. Don’t fuck with the blogosphere, you agents of the corporatocracy. We bite.

Hack the Planet! Lulzsec, Anonymous and the Call for Accountability (2011)

Anonymous There’s something about the world of hackers, cyberpunks and online activists that is so intriguing that it has always been a topic of great interest to me. Of course the reality rarely matches the myth, but I thought it was important to try and clear up some misconceptions that were going around in the press at the time whilst also highlighting why people of this persuasion – whether you agree with their methods or not – have a very important role to play in the 21st century.

This post doesn’t even cover half the story, as time progressed we learned of hidden arrests and FBI sting operations that only served to make this techno-thriller that much more compelling.

London/UK Riots: Are We Limiting Our Understanding of Violence? (2011)

2011 was when I really began to hit my writing stride, and my response to the London riots written on the day they had concluded is one of my favourite pieces of work. I was shocked to see how quickly many of my previously liberal friends and peers were to call for martial law, swift punishment and harsh sentencing – and so this was my attempt to highlight why we must try and see beyond the surface and rise above our primal response mechanisms. We need to learn how to read the language of our cities and societies more effectively, particularly when they are screaming at us.

Beyond Cute Robots: Towards a New Concept of Sentience (2011)

iCub - Future Conscience Part of what I love about writing the blog is that it encourages me to get out there and go to exhibitions or other events that are relevant and interesting. This post sees me playing around with ideas surrounding the anthropomorphic nature of our view of sentience, and I enjoy it because of its philosophical depth. Like many of the posts on the site, it’s basically a stream-of-consciousness piece…which means that it trades off a certain degree of structure and academic riguour in an attempt to access those areas of our minds that rest just on the edge of what we can grasp hold of.

We are the 99%! You are the Revolution! (2011)

The Social Psychology of Occupy (2012)

These two posts bookend my experiences with the Occupy London movement, and in many ways show a transition from pure idealism to the pragmatics of social transformation. The first is a call to action, the second a sincere attempt to examine why the movement all but fell apart. Broad-based resistance to dominant and damaging social (and, particularly, commercial and economic) paradigms is important, and I hope to see it continue in other forms that can learn from the drawbacks of the Occupy movement and how it operated in practice. As an aside: if there’s one thing that I will take away from experiences with Occupy, it’s that there is no such thing as a large-scale horizontal movement. No matter how many times you say otherwise. At least, not yet…

So there you have it…some of the best posts that this blog has to offer. I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing how the blog has developed over the years (some of my earlier writing is so cringe!) and I look forward to writing more for you as we continue to look towards the future and ask ourselves the question: What do we want to be?

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Buzz Aldrin, Curiosity on Mars, and the Privatisation of Space

Written on August 2, 2012 in Communications & Technology, Science & Environment

It’s not every day that you get to sit in front of someone who has walked on the surface of the Moon. Today I was given just such an opportunity, a conversation with Buzz Aldrin which took place at the newly refurbished House of St Barnabas – which for the Olympics madness has been knighted as Omega House, a private hospitality venue in the centre of London named after the illustrious watch-making company and official timekeepers of the London 2012 Olympics.

The venue could barely withstand the level of interest in seeing such a legendary figure speak, and the mixed group of media and guests were separated into two rooms. First to listen to a presentation by Buzz Aldrin on his experiences with the Apollo Programme and then a multi-room Q&A that covered everything from the need for a renewed focus on Mars (a manned mission which he predicts will occur by 2040) to a question one would guess came from an Omega spokesperson as to why Buzz chose to wear one of their watches when he first stepped onto the lunar surface. For the record, Buzz gave a masterful stroke of non-marketing by saying that there was ‘nothing more useless when you’re on the surface of the Moon then knowing the time in Houston, Texas.‘ You’ve got to respect an answer like that.

Beyond the truly inspiring rhetoric, and the desire to see renewed focus on the exploration of space and its eventual colonisation, there were interesting undertones of patriotism that displayed Buzz Aldrin’s well-known Republican leanings. It sounded slightly anachronistic when we consider projects such as the Large Hadron Collider and the collective efforts that brought it such success to hear this impressive man speak of national competitiveness. Not to mention a kind of dissonance when he says quite passionately that ‘we as a Nation need to…‘ – clearly the people he was addressing, given our location and international context, were not the ‘Nation’ he was talking of. To be fair, he did close one of the final questions by saying that we ‘need to be competitive on the small things, and work together on the big.‘ To be even more fair, he walked on the frickin’ MOON.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t one of those selected to put forward a question so I thought it would be worth asking here and exploring some of the reasons why I would have been interested to hear his answer. Quite simply, I wanted to ask: Do you think we should allow the privatisation of space? In a session that was filled with both talk of national accomplishments and inspiring collective human endeavours, there was little mention of the commercialisation of space exploration and the consequences of allowing a privatisation of this new frontier. When we consider the recent SpaceX mission, which was the first commercial company to dock with the International Space Station, it’s becoming increasingly likely that any successful mission to Mars – particularly one that has a persistent presence – could well be a privately funded enterprise.

NASA Curiosity Mars rover With the NASA Curiosity rover scheduled to touch down in just three days, it brings up interesting questions about the relationship between publicly and privately funded space research and the motivations driving missions in the future. Is it a case where the bulk of the research and development will be publicly funded, and then those with deep pockets are best positioned to use this research for sustainable programmes that have profit margins in mind?

NASA’s commercial crew programme is set to pump over half a billion dollars worth of state spending into developing privately operated enterprises – with the justification being that it will reduce future budgetary demands. The socialisation of cost and the privatisation of profit is a theme that seems to be occurring frequently in our ‘free market’ society recently, and it is one that in the US at least looks to be replicated in the space sector.

In the short term, it might seem that this commercialised approach is not only inevitable (given the rights of companies and individuals to produce technology capable of such feats) but also desirable. There are many advantages that private spaceflight can bring to the table, and a competitive market will drive down production costs, increase research and development capabilities, and probably mean that we achieve milestones much quicker than if we were to wait for underfunded government programmes (particularly at a time of global recession).

In the longer view, some pivotal questions are raised which need to be openly tackled. Who can claim ownership of land or resources on other planets or moons? Will the private market create an access problem in which only the richest members of our global society are able to participate? Will the sense of cosmic wonder and collective ingenuity be replaced with a corporate battleground of patents, lawsuits and profit margins? Perhaps the most important question…is it just going to be first come (or go as the case may be), first served?

SpaceX Dragon docking at ISS How we treat the extension of humanity beyond planet Earth will dictate the very philosophical foundations that we build our future social identity around. Yes, it might be true in the current socio-economic context that many of the things we dream of cannot be achieved without privatisation of one kind or another – but at what cost, then, will our dreams be fulfilled?

If we privatise the exploration and colonisation of our solar system can we truly say it was done out of a sense of uplifting and evolving humanity towards a more unified, collective vision of what it means to create and exist? Or will our vision be determined by those who had the means to get their first, solidifying further their place at the top of the global hierarchy.

Many of these questions are covered by various articles of the Outer Space Treaty – currently ratified by 100 countries, with more to come. This treaty provides a promising basis for our future explorations, including the concept that bodies such as the Moon or planets such as Mars should be considered the ‘common heritage of mankind’ and therefore protected from some of the worst case scenarios we might imagine. Such a treaty is a good foundation to start from, but we’re already seeing that there is quite a bit of leeway in how it can be interpreted.

Consider plans to create for-profit asteroid mining companies, lauding their ability to ‘add trillions of dollars to the global GDP’ (or the balance sheet of the corporations who achieve such feats). A cursory reading of the Outer Space Treaty would lead you to believe that such an enterprise would fall under ‘appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means’. But apparently this is not the case…Treaties are only as good as the level to which they are enforced and the degree to which they are unambiguous. Also, the OST is designed to specifically deal with matters of national sovereignty and doesn’t really concern itself with private business matters. There’s a clause on page 40 which states that ‘the activities of non-government entities in outer space shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the State concerned‘. Ambiguous, at best.

Which is not to mention the fact that the Outer Space Treaty does not deal with important links in the chain of interstellar exploration. NASA is seeing itself move towards a model where commercial space flights are key – whilst countries such as Russia and China are keeping their programmes tightly under state control. Whether or not a single national or corporate body can claim sovereignty over particular areas of space is less relevant then their ability to monopolise the means of access. Sovereignty is less of an issue when you’re the only one capable of extracting those minerals from asteroids, and you control the patents and means for others to do the same.

It’s kind of a difficult concept how one can sell interstellar resources for private profit when they are considered to be the ‘common heritage of mankind’. When they get back to Earth will the payloads of these missions be distributed evenly amongst all parties who wish to profit from them? If that were to be the case, who would bear the brunt of the financial risk and costs – and must they be compensated with significant rates of return? If we don’t allow sovereignty and we feel that privatisation is undesirable does that mean that we need to forego space exploration altogether?

In order to achieve some of the outcomes that many are hoping to see in their lifetimes it is inevitable that we will see an increasing move towards privatised models of space exploration and commercialisation. The ‘Space Rush’ period will see the demise of many well-funded companies as the risks for involvement are so high, but the possible rewards are also astronomical in value (sorry…couldn’t let that one pass). It strikes me that we need to consider our approach to this transitional period of human history far more carefully then we are currently doing, particularly in the sense of our general public engagement with the questions at hand. By relying on national interests and government processes we also rely on traditional lobbying streams, and it’s quite clear who will win out if those forces are left to their own devices.

Buzz Aldrin visor reflection Our exploration of the solar system and beyond should be seen as the best chance we have at overcoming our biological nature for territorialism, hostility and competition; replacing it instead with a mode of action that builds upon our capacity for empathy, compassion and collective wellbeing. Commercial enterprise will definitely play an important role in getting us to the point where we can spread our wings as a species and expand into a new destiny. We just need to ask ourselves what that destiny might look like, who will form it, and who will be the primary beneficiaries.

Heading off to the stars is not merely a matter of spectacle to be read or watched from a distance, it is quite literally a new dawning for humanity. Is that really something we’d be willing to sell to the highest bidder?

I realise I’ve thrown a lot of questions out there with this post, a lot of what ifs and how abouts without too many answers following. This is partly because it’s an area that I haven’t done much detailed research into, and I’m using this post as a springboard into the topic. I’d very much like to hear your thoughts on these questions, so please do leave a comment below.

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Top 10 Futurist Websites

Written on July 15, 2012 in Communications & Technology, Lifestyle & Society, Religion & Spirituality, Science & Environment

Future Retro (image by Radar Communication, Flickr, CC)

That’s right, it’s another top 10 list. To be fair, we all love them (you know you do…) and they always prove to be popular. Given that Future Conscience exists slightly outside of the usual futurist circles, I thought that the readers here would appreciate a list of the sites that I often rely on when looking for inspiration about the future trajectory of humanity.

These sites represent my favourites at the time of posting – subject to change, requiring additions…enjoy!

10. Southern Poverty Law Center – Intelligence Report

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is a ‘non-profit civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry’ and I have long been visiting their site not only because of the great work they do but also because of the publication they produce called the Intelligence Report. This is a quarterly magazine which is reproduced online that monitors trends in extremism in the U.S and is incredibly well researched and written. I have a keen interest in groups that foster extreme ideology of any kind, and it is undeniable that in an era of rapid change and social turmoil we must ensure diligence against any group or organisation that promotes an ideology of hatred and destruction.

9. io9

This site is well known to those that tend towards the geekier side of life (i.e. awesome people). Primarily covering science fiction and comic-related news, the site also has a strong focus on interesting technology and futurist thought. Basically, from a love of science fiction comes a love of futurist news and its presented in a very accessible and entertaining way. Bite-sized but with depth, accessible without being asinine, io9 is a great site for anybody with an interest in the future to have as your homepage.

8. Antiwar.com

At first you might wonder whether this site could really be called ‘futurist’ at all, it’s almost completely a news site reporting on current events. However, it is impossible to have any insight into the future without an accurate understanding of the present and Antiwar.com provides one of the best daily overviews of global conflict that you are likely to find.

Of course, it wears its political leanings on its sleeve and I often find some of the comments from readers to tend towards the more conspiratorial side of things – but the news it aggregates comes from across all sources of media and the commentary from some of its columnists is refreshing in the attempt to get beyond partisan political standpoints and delve deeper into the issues at hand. There’s not much point thinking about the future if you’re ignoring what’s occurring right now, so make sure to put Antiwar.com on your reading list.

8b. Future Timeline

Okay, sometimes you miss something from a list that really does need to be included. Future Timeline is one such website that I overlooked when first publishing this post yesterday – and since Antiwar.com is not really a futurist website I figured it would be appropriate to rectify this oversight here. The site feels old-school in its design (like many futurist websites, funnily enough) but contains an almost encyclopedic overview of futurist topics and is one of the few sites to attempt to delineate a timeline of progression. If nothing else, it gives some perspective to the futurist field and makes you think about where you would place the different advances being discussed. With a relatively active forum that has built some considerable depth to it over the years, and a good selection of links and regular new updates Future Timeline really does deserve to be on this list – so here it is.

7. Singularity Institute

Originally focusing on the implementation of artificial intelligence, the Singularity Institute has widened its remit in recent years to include many forms of futurist thought that surround the concept of the ‘intelligence explosion’ or Singularity. This is where you have Ray Kurzweil (whose site Kurzweilai.net I’m including within this entry on the list) hanging out with Aubrey de Grey, Peter Thiel with Eliezer Yudkowksy – the Singularity Summit is one of the most discussed events on the futurist calendar each year and for good reason.

Having said this, I’ve always approached it with a slight degree of caution as those attracted to the Singularity Institute do seem to be amongst the more zealous and ideologically alarmist of the futurist community. Which is not to say that there isn’t concern warranted in the direction that humanity is taking, indeed it is the entire focus of this blog, but amongst all of the very deep and thought-provoking research and position papers there’s an underlying ideological conformity that’s worth noting. But as far as the futurist ‘rock stars’ are concerned – most of them can be found relating to this Institute in some shape or form, and for that reason alone its a central hub of activity. Speaking of hubs, I’m going to throw in Singularity Hub into this entry as well – a very good collection of futurist news and links updated daily.

6. Science Daily

For obvious reasons, a lot of futurist thought revolves around scientific advancements in technology and medicine; and one of the best sites for announcements and articles from reputable sources is Science Daily. It’s packed full of content and although the site layout is a bit dense (and also relies on the old ‘hide the Google ads’ technique) there’s enough here to keep you learning for a long time. It tends towards a pure science focus, and as such there is less exploration of the implications of the advancements being discussed, but that doesn’t stop it from being a great resource to keep on top of the latest scientific advancements from around the world.

5. World Future Society

The Futurist magazine The World Future Society is the preeminent organisation for global futurist thought, and The Futurist magazine gives on a bi-monthly basis the most comprehensive and authentic overview of the field available. The fact that a large proportion of current-issue content is available online for free is commendable, and although they don’t have the vast free resources of others that will be mentioned below there are for-pay archives available running back through to the 1960s (and at $0.10 an article I think we can call that fair enough).

Beyond the well-known magazine, they hold annual conferences and have an extensive membership network with meetings around the world. Unfortunately the website itself is falling behind the times a bit in terms of layout and design, and thus I can’t give the WFS the top spot on this list…but as far as futurist organisations are concerned, they certainly deserve it!

4. Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET)

The IEET was amongst the first futurist sites that I really started visiting on a regular basis, and you can see its obvious correlation to the focus of Future Conscience. The site provides a great news overview that includes multiple posts a day, and papers from their peer-reviewed Journal of Evolution and Technology are available free to download.

The site does suffer like the World Future Society from having a slightly archaic look – but it gets the job done and it gives you the information and inspiration that we crave. Co-founded by Nick Bostrom, who is the Director of the Oxford Future of Humanity Institute – another organisation well worth your time so I’m going to include them in this entry on the list.

3. r/futurology and #future

Reddit Futurology Reddit – the ‘front page of the internet’. Given the recent eye-opening news about Digg’s spectacular fall from grace, and the not negligable role that the humble narwhal that is Reddit played in that demise, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that one of my top recommendations is a user-controlled news aggregator along with Twitter, everybody’s favourite little microblogger that could.

With just under 11,000 subscribers on r/futurology, there’s a lot of people posting a lot of news, images, thought and generally inspiring things that you will want to see. Right now on the front page of r/futurology there are night-vision contact lenses, a graph showing the implementation of Moore’s Law, predictions for 2030, transhumanism, space travel, solar energy…the list is endless and changes every few hours. Beyond the external content, it’s the level of discussion the community generates on an endless diversity of topics that will keep you thinking and deserves such a high place.

Twitter hashtags such as #future (and to a lesser, but more focused extent #futurist) should also be one of your primary sources when it comes to getting an overview of the futurist zeitgeist at any particular moment. By following the people who post to #future and other similar hashtags you will receive a constant stream of futurist updates on topics you didn’t even know you were interested in.

2. RAND Corporation

One of the largest and most influential think tanks in the world, the RAND Corporation is controversial because of its close ties to the US government and armed forces. Although what their research is used for and by whom should be very carefully considered, the fact remains that the papers that come out of RAND are necessary reading for any potential futurist. Areas of focus cover all major socio-economic sectors and concerns, and the vast majority of it is filled with useful data, forward looking and projection based.

With over 10,000 research papers available online, papers that inform much of the foreign policy of the world’s largest superpower, the RAND Corporation influences our general perception of the future more than most people realise. If you’re looking for data on almost anything relevant to the futurist field, there’s probably a paper on this site that you can refer to. Whether you should or not, I’ll leave that up to you…

1. Wired – Blogs

It’s kind of an obvious choice, but I have to give the top spot to Wired and in particular to their collection of blogs that explore on a daily basis our path towards the future. If I was pressed to choose, I would immediately say that Threat Level is my favourite blog not only on the Wired site but on the web as a whole. There are a lot of bloggers out there (and I include myself in this) who are okay at what we do and happy to comment on the world around us, but few have such detailed a grasp and depth of understanding on their chosen topic as the writers over at Wired.

All of their blogs are excellent and each one on its own deserves to be on this list, but Threat Level just picks up on such a fascinating aspect of the modern era (online privacy, crime and security) that I find almost every post there to be a revelation. The team of writers over at Wired are at the forefront of accessible reporting on often unfathomable cultural paradigm shifts, and their implicit focus on liberty and an overall concern for the collective wellbeing of society can never be applauded enough.

I’ve missed something, but what is it? Let us all know by leaving a comment below! And for all you futurist bloggers out there that feel left out, you haven’t been forgotten. Stay tuned…

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Timeline: The Future of Videogames

Written on June 2, 2012 in Communications & Technology, General, Lifestyle & Society

Augmented reality (image by Gary Hayes, Flickr, CC)

Videogames are emerging from their period of infancy and maturing to be one of the most all-encompassing and inspiring entertainment mediums of our time, becoming an increasingly central component of modern culture. It’s well known that in the last few years the industry began to outpace the film industry, bringing in more revenue and positioning itself at the top of the entertainment pile.

What we’re starting to see now is a broadening of the medium into areas that were previously considered out of reach, moving from being perceived as a simple children’s activity to one that can delve into the most mature of narratives and challenge many of our perceptions of identity and expression. Interactive entertainment, particularly in the form of gaming, is going to be one of the key sectors of the 21st century – and so I thought it would be good to have a go at projecting the future of videogames and stimulate some discussion as to where the medium is heading and how quickly it might get there.

2013/14

Next generation of home consoles is released, with a push towards digital distribution models that create even more difficulty for physical retailers and are detrimental to the second-hand market. Motion and voice controls are built into the core of the system more effectively, and we also see more cross-platform cohesion between consoles and portables already being rolled-out with the likes of the Playstation Vita. Recent concept demos from the Wii U controller show off other forms of this connectivity.

Some issues will arise from exponentially increasing development costs, technology demands and consumer expectations. Big-budget development will become the domain of an increasingly smaller number of large, multinational corporations – with blockbuster titles focusing even more on tried and true genres that will be developed along franchise iterations to try and maintain a sales base. On the other end of the spectrum, the indy game boom will continue to innovate in areas that require less funding – and even in some instances that do through use of platforms such as Kickstarter – but there will be a big gap between the two funding spheres with little in between.

2015

Augmented reality gaming starts to take hold through smartphones and glasses technology from the likes of Google which are releasing the technology next year, but expect it to take a few years to achieve any widespread use. Geo-locational gaming becomes more accepted amongst a mainstream consumer audience, and gaming as a general past-time becomes further embedded into daily activities.

There will be a few instances of augmented gaming related injuries as people forget they are still out in the real world, and the safety of these platforms will come into question but will ultimately not be an issue as people adapt to their use. What we’re also going to see are more creative forms of advertising and product placement to replace the current forms which are beginning to fail within these new digital environments.

The connection between home consoles and portable systems will become more comprehensive, and games will incorporate more elements that require real-world interaction through the use of portable devices. This will lead to a boom in alternate reality gaming, bringing the paradigms of videogame culture to our daily activities. In traditional forms of gaming, simulation of accurate physics will become increasingly important as graphics advances begin to see diminishing returns. With the new increases in processing power available we will start to see some incredibly life-like simulations for things such as damage models; whilst also being able to simulate more far-fetched, but highly entertaining, interactions between vast numbers of moving objects or particles.

There will also be more connection between your online and offline personas, with facial-recognition technology relaying your expressions and lip movements into the multiplayer gaming experience. Persistence in gaming will become more prevalent, and there will be an increased emphasis on constantly updating your game through short bursts of activity that can be accessed anywhere. This is something that we currently see in the casual gaming market, but it will become more of a component of complex games and will feed into the experience through various mini-games or ‘side quests’ that allow you to progress your game state for the next time you play.

2018

The first generation of digital distribution only consoles, physical media is no longer used and the service is streamed via cloud storage technology to your entertainment system. These devices combine all of your entertainment needs into a single package – play on demand video, television and music comes along with a subscription to particular gaming platforms which offer certain exclusives and maybe a few different control mechanisms compared to their competitors.

By this stage, retail distribution of games will cease in the form we know currently, replaced instead with public gaming hubs which cater to the many different forms of interactive entertainment. A new arcade renaissance will occur in this sense, and gaming will become an integral part of socialising.

We’ll also see this social gaming begin to be more prominent in the home environment as well, with interactive coffee tables beginning to become increasingly affordable and meaning that the traditional board-games of nights of years gone by can be augmented by interactive interfaces that not only allow far greater creativity in design but can also do all the rules-keeping for you.

New forms of distribution also mean that publishers can be more experimental and indy developers gain more exposure, so we will see much wider diversity in the games being published whilst hopefully also seeing a smaller gap between big-budget and indy developers as gaming engines and construction tools are made affordable that can still push the technology available. We’ll start to see a lot more controversial content as well, exploring the limits of the human condition in both positive and negative forms. The experiences generated will be increasingly open-ended, allowing us to start delving into more challenging and emotionally impacting issues and seeing the resulting outcomes. New outcries from various interest groups will be generated by the realism achievable not only in the physical actions of violent behaviour, but in the resulting displays of emotional artificial intelligence and how they react to this behaviour in ways which could become increasingly disturbing in their realism.

Ultimately the boundaries of the experience will still be dictated to us by the designers (truly emergent gaming will come later…) – but in this sense there will be more examples where games are considered true pieces of art or literature by a wide-range of people and the cultural significance of gaming will become more celebrated, with the result being a much wider diversity in narrative form and content.

2020

Gaming is considered as normal an activity as watching sport on a weekend and will cover almost every demographic. The majority of people in the developed world will have grown up around videogames and there will be very few people who do not have a certain genre of game that appeals to them. Traditional entertainment mediums such as game shows will be produced through virtual multiplayer capabilities and recognition technology embedded into Smart TVs independent of gaming platforms, allowing people to have the chance to take part from the comfort of their own homes.

The interactive nature of gaming technology will also be seen in many different aspects of life, not merely entertainment – for example it will become commonplace to have interactive technology used to train sectors that require finely-tuned motor skills such as medicine or sports. Even fields such as urban planning will be greatly impacted by the increasingly realistic design algorithms being created for games such as the Sim City series. The possibilities for education are endless, and typically quoted examples are things like realistic historical simulations or science classes, whilst architecture and design schools will continue to be at the forefront of the use of new technological capabilities. Fitness will be a past-time that is increasingly undertaken effectively within the home as gaming provides new reward structures, and in response to this gyms will start incorporating more forms of social and individual gaming into their machines and layouts.

Our reliance on technology will increase rapidly by this stage, and it will be very common to see people with permanently on and attached interfaces that are constantly accessible and used to augment the physical experience they are in. E-sports will be considered more mainstream and will be watched in public, and entirely new industries will be developed around supporting the emergence of new e-sport platforms and the infrastructure needed to develop them as professional vocations. Celebrity culture will emerge around the best gamers, designers and developers; and user-created streams that revolve around gaming culture in all its variety will be more watched than almost any other form of entertainment media.

2025

Virtual reality simulations begin to become viable in the home market, and unlike the augmented reality techniques that have been in favour for the last ten years these will begin to feature fully immersive systems. These experiences will still feel somewhat detached from reality though, as control mechanisms will require various forms of static activity (hand motions, eye movements, traditional controller sticks).

The immersion will come from the use of light-weight, non-intrusive headsets or contact lenses and glove sensors that provide the immersive audio-visual, tactile experience needed to suspend disbelief as images are projected directly onto your retinas in stereoscopic detail whilst your hand motions are transferred with 100% accuracy as well as tactile feedback.

Graphics and physics technology by this stage will be able to perfectly mimic real-world resolutions and depth, with added emergent behavioural algorithms allowing sandbox gaming and interaction with characters and environments that promote personally crafted narrative experiences. The MMOs of this era will be infinite in scope and continuously updating themselves with content from algorithms, designers users; and possibly even interchangeable with just a single identity across multiple platforms and games. Viewing other people’s emergent playback recordings will become a regular past-time, and entire entertainment series will be situated around writers and directors using the technology to tell traditional as well as non-linear, multi-protagonist forms of narrative for viewers to later experience whilst also bringing the concept of ‘reality television’ to a new level.

2030

The relational paradigm between user and machine will change as neural signatures are used as primary input methods for interaction with digital environments. Whereas before input schemes would rely on fixed boundaries (press button X, wave hand, move analog stick) game platforms will have to go through a process of learning about each user’s unique brain patterns and adapting accordingly. Initially used as a control scheme, this will pave the way for deeper emotional attachments and emergent story-telling as gaming environments can respond to the emotions of the individual using them.

If the game is supposed to evoke fear, it could very gradually ramp up particular imagery or situational experiences that the individual user is responding to with anxiety – phasing out aspects that are not getting the desired effect and making those that are become more prominent and intense. Likewise, interaction with in-game characters will become much more lifelike as artificial intelligences are able to be informed by the neural activity of the player as to what they like or are put off by and respond accordingly (even provoking the player intentionally). Intense gaming experiences such as action-based violence will be able to be paced perfectly according to the feedback from the player, with action increasing when the player is feeling more calm and maintaining a certain level of adrenaline within the individual by customising the experience to them.

Non-action gaming experiences will be far more predominant than they ever have been, as they begin to be tailored to the wants of each player and a much wider demographic that are seeking experiences beyond traditional competitive, adversarial models. Romantic experiences will be seen more often in games, with relationships becoming central components of particular genres, and sexual activity will as always be a profitable sub-culture but will also be dealt with in a more nuanced manner as part of mainstream games.

The use of videogames as a medium beyond entertainment will see great leaps at this point, as the ability to cater the technology to different forms of behavioural therapy, educational use or other personal or group development will enable more people to grapple with aspects of the human condition that can sometimes be difficult to address or, in the case of mental health for example, are often stigmatised. Of course, with an effectiveness in these areas there are also increases in less positive uses, such as social conditioning or emotional manipulation that could be used by numerous ideological or political movements.

This change in the relational paradigm will mean that gaming becomes a direct projection of as well as influence on our personal and group identities in an ever evolving feedback loop. By this stage it’s incredibly difficult to predict how it will be used, but we can be certain that such an all-inclusive interactive medium will impact every area of human life and will allow us to explore every creative or even destructive avenue that we are capable of.

2045

- The Holodeck (shown here in its current-day form) will achieve its true potential. I’m not sure I have to say much more about this, because really it’s going to be the end point of any timeline of the future of videogames. Every other iteration mentioned in this timeline will still be present, and there will be interactive elements embedded into every aspect of our modern societies – gaming or otherwise. Every aspect of what has already been discussed will continue to develop along its own lines and become increasingly culture forming, from augmented reality applications to e-sports (and there’ll always be a market for authentic retro gaming). But the ultimate entertainment medium comes in the form of limitless creative potential and expression. There’s nowhere you can really go from here, as all experiences imaginable will be achievable. They can be as real or fantastical as you would want them to be, catered to any genre or style, tailored in each instance to be a unique experience.

There won’t even necessarily need to be development teams behind the experiences, as artificial intelligences and sets of emergent experience algorithms could take care of all such activity (albeit based on remarkably erudite levels of platform engine coding, which will likely be the result of modular software applications). There will be more focus on people who can design the parameters for good experiences rather than hard-code them, a reverting back to the story-teller archetype over technical expertise.

At this point the line between games and reality truly becomes blurred to the point of being irrelevant, and there will be countless discussions as to the ethics of such technology, the impact it has on our psychology and identity, and whether we should place any boundaries on its use. But such a discussion is best kept for another time…

I hope you’ve enjoyed this thought-exercise in considering where videogames will be going over the next few decades. It’s difficult to write such a piece, more difficult than I expected it to be, so it’s important that you leave your thoughts in a comment below and add in anything that’s been missed!

What do you think the future of videogames will be?

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Radio Free Albemuth: Interview with Writer/Director John Alan Simon

Written on May 3, 2012 in Communications & Technology, Lifestyle & Society, Religion & Spirituality, Reviews, Science & Environment

John Alan Simon - Writer/Director of Radio Free Albemuth

Radio Free Albemuth - Shea Whigham It’s kind of odd to think that it was two years ago almost to the day that I first got to see a preview screening of the Philip K Dick adaptation Radio Free Albemuth. That original review has gone on to be the second most viewed post on this blog, something I’m grateful for because it is quite a personal piece in many ways. The film is a fantastic addition to the legacy of Philip K Dick, and is a must see not only for fans of the author but for anybody who wants a more cerebral and spiritual approach to their film viewing.

So, two years later and the finished edit of the film rolls back into town for the Sci-Fi-London Film Festival – of course I’m going to go and see the finished product!

Before reading my thoughts on this final version – go and read the original review I did for the film. It displays my appreciation for this work and what it is trying to achieve in a way that I wouldn’t be able to repeat here. Consider this an addendum to the first review. You’ve gone and read it now? Great, let’s continue.

This viewing didn’t have quite the perfectly surreal circumstances surrounding it that last time had, but there was the extra bonus of being able to meet Writer/Director John Alan Simon, and Producer Elizabeth Karr, who were at the screening to answer questions and talk about a project that has been at the forefront of their lives for the last few years. I’m lucky enough that John Alan Simon also agreed to provide some insight for this site, and after a few thoughts on the final version of the film you can find the resulting interview below.

Radio Free Albemuth - Katheryn Winnick It’s hard knowing how to review a movie for the second time, but it’s easy to say that I still stand strongly by everything I originally stated – this is not only a film for fans of Philip K Dick, but one that takes very seriously the important message that lies at the core of the work and makes it accessible for any audience. With a second view, it also gave me a chance to develop an added appreciation for some of its depth.

This is particularly the case for certain character portrayals that I overlooked the first time, such as the subtle and reserved performance from Katheryn Winnick, who plays Rachel Brady. Her character is marginalised as part of the narrative, and I had done the same when first viewing the movie because I was so caught up in the near perfect portrayal of Philip K Dick himself by Shea Whigham (a performance that rightly deserves a great deal of praise).

Likewise I found a new appreciation for Jonathan Scarfe, who plays main protagonist Nicholas Brady, because with the first viewing I was distracted by the obviously constructed special effects shots that he is often in and overlooked his ability to convey the self-assuredness of a character that others think might be going insane whilst he himself maintains a sense of calm lucidity. The performances throughout the film sometimes miss the mark, but there’s also a sense of authenticity that’s hard to articulate but comes across clearly on the screen. This is a deeply honest film, and as such it makes for refreshing viewing amongst the cookie-cutter blockbusters that we’re used to.

Radio Free Albemuth is a film that rewards repeat viewings – and not just because this version was more tightly edited and had a more immersive pacing than the preview. There are levels of detail both in the world, but also emerging from the ideological and spiritual depth of the original text that speak to you differently depending on the person you are at the time.

It is this malleability of how you relate to the film that speaks so highly of its quality and the timelessness of the original source material. This is a film that will always be relevant, and you will lose yourself in the contemplative flow of its content and form. It was a labour of love when first written by Philip K Dick – a deeply personal narrative journey – and it has equally been born into the world of film with the same sense of mission and purpose by those who worked on it. Thankfully, this has paid off with an incredibly deep film that will stand as a perfect tribute to the life and work of Philip K Dick.

I think I already summed up my thoughts best when I wrote the first review, so I’m going to quote myself here to conclude:

“You don’t get the masterful cinematography of Blade Runner. It doesn’t have the flawless characterisation of A Scanner Darkly. Instead, Radio Free Albemuth provides us with the most faithful film representation we have to date of just who Philip K Dick was as a man, a writer, a mystic.”

But enough from me, here’s some insight from Writer/Director John Alan Simon:

1) It’s been two years since the preview of the film in London, and you’ve taken the film around the world since then. Has any aspect of the film been changed based on the early feedback you were getting?

JAS: I think it might have been Francis Coppola who once said – “you never finish a movie, you only abandon it.” And I’ve discovered there’s a lot of truth to that observation. Early on, I made the decision that I would rather make a movie that a select number of people really loved – than a film that a larger number of people merely liked. So I was lucky to have that freedom.

When we screened to Sci-Fi-London in 2010, I knew there was more I wanted to do with the movie but I wasn’t sure precisely what. The people who I had hoped would love the movie did – in fact – love the movie, including yourself at Future Conscience. I always knew this was not a film for everyone. But I also felt in screenings that I attended at various festivals that there was a large part of the audience who should have “liked” the movie more than they did.

I showed the film to quite a few people to help me “diagnose” the problem, including Chris Rouse who won an Academy Award for Bourne Supremacy and multiple BAFTA’s. He really liked the film but suggested taking a look at just small changes. Another director friend, Jonathan Heap made a small suggestion about an early scene – ending the scene with a slight trim. And that change triggered my taking a look at the pacing throughout. I realized that while each scene was “well-edited” there was a kind of similar tempo to many of the scenes.

So with about 150 small trims, I think I was able to pick up the pace and also create more tension through the rhythm of the scenes. This also suggested to me to use music a bit more – so I worked with the composer Ralph Grierson to add about 12 minutes more musical score. Those changes had the benefit also of cutting the movie’s length by close to 12 minutes. No one asked me to cut the movie and no one forced any changes, it was all my decision and I think the movie “plays” much better as a result. By happy chance, the first screening of the final version was the screening that Variety chose to review – and we got a really, really excellent review.

2) As a futurist blogger, I’m interested in what you think are the key messages of the film (and book) when related to society today and looking forwards?

JAS: I think there is an almost “timeless” quality to all truly successful works of literature (and cinema, also). And just as that applied to Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World, so, too Radio Free Albemuth. When I first read the novel, Richard Nixon was no longer president, but there was no war on terror or George Bush, but I still found the book extremely meaningful. Perhaps at that point, the mystical and spiritual aspects seemed the more important. As world events changed it seemed like RFA was torn from the headlines, as they say. Then after Obama, I was a little concerned about the relevance. And then the Arab spring – then Occupy movement – now Syria – and perhaps Russia. The message of the novel – and the the movie – is essentially eternal. As the character of Silvia says: “it’s an ancient struggle, the value of the individual against the supremacy of the state.”

3) Philip K Dick is one of the most adapted authors by Hollywood. Do you feel the industry respects him as an important part of literary history, or is he seen more as a repository for off-the-wall ideas that make good action flicks? Does Hollywood get Philip K Dick?

JAS: Hollywood is not monolithic anymore – perhaps it never was. The studios are run by smart people who have run the numbers. It makes more sense economically over the long-haul to make a single $100 million movie than a hundred $1 million movies. So that’s what they do. And $100 million films have to appeal to a very large number of people or – you have John Carter, right? And the head of Disney finds himself out of a job a few weeks later.

Philip K. Dick had one of the most inventive minds of the 20th century, in addition to his brilliance as a writer. So it’s irresistible for Hollywood to “license” those inventive ideas and build large-scale, popular entertainments while jettisoning the humanistic values that really motivated much of Dick’s writing. And then at a certain point, Philip K. Dick the writer becomes “Philip K. Dick” the brand. And any chance that adherence to even the bare skeletal structure of a story is gone – hence Next or even Adjustment Bureau. This is not to knock those films – both were enjoyable on a certain level – merely to state the truth that neither had much at all do with the original works they were ostensibly “based” on. We ended up using this reductionism to our benefit. I asked the question, what is the “star” of our movie is the “Philip K Dick” brand name. How much can we afford to make the movie for based on that economic assumption, and thereby remain as absolutely faithful as possible to the story and spirit of Radio Free Albemuth.

4) The film is an authentic representation of a very personal work – how did you go about achieving this authenticity (particularly with the character of PKD himself), and how has it been received by his family and others who were close to him?

JAS: I like actors and, having worked in theatre some, I enjoy the process of working with actors. Not all film directors do. But I will agree with most directors that “casting” is the most important element for getting a great film performance. If you cast the wrong actor it’s very hard for even an enormously skilled director to “recover” from that error. There simply isn’t enough time while making a film. So I like to spend a long time casting and to learn from every actor I audition something new about the character and the approach to the dialogue.

I knew that I would probably not cast very well known actors for the leads, because I thought it would likely take the audience out of this strange,quirky alternative world to see Brad Pitt or Mark Wahlberg in the lead parts. Not that we ever approached them! Or would have had any chance to get them. (By the way If Brad Pitt HAD decided to make this movie, it would have become an entirely different movie – in terms of budget, effects, everything. That’s like what happens if the Queen or President of the U.S. accepts an invitation for a “small dinner” at your house!).

So I feel very fortunate to have been able to find the right actors for these parts. I try to focus very hard on three or four qualities that I want each character to embody. Qualities are so basic usually that it’s not a question of acting – but more of “being.” On stage you can have enough rehearsal time for an actor to “stretch” the boundaries of his own character dynamic but not usually for a film – and especially not such an ambitious film as RFA with a very tight 24 days shooting schedule.

I told Shea Whigham that he didn’t need to “impersonate” Philip K. Dick because unlike Philip Seymour Hoffman’s challenge for Capote, there isn’t much video of PKD out there. He didn’t have a very distinctive accent. I gave Shea some documentary footage but also said just to find the “truth” of the character as written in the script. Although PKD made himself a character in the book, it’s an alternate reality- and therefore, especially in the movie, I felt we didn’t have any obligation to be 100 per cent faithful to the actual man but rather how he thought of himself. Which is always better than any of us really are. In reality, PKD had five wives and lots of quarrels in his personal life with friends. In the book and even more so in the movie, it is a more idealized view of the man as both artist and friend. So in RFA, the character of PKD is very cool, almost in the the Beat generation style of Kerouac or Neal Cassady. So we discussed that – and in trying that approach I think we really succeeded beyond my expectation.

PKD’s daughter Isa Dick-Hackett really liked both the movie and Shea’s performance. And when we were at the Science Fiction World Con in Reno last year, we were chosen to screen after the Hugo Awards ceremony – one of the sf writers in attendance had known PKD while they were both living in Berkeley. she said that was a very cool guy at that age in the movie – mid-thirties – and she couldn’t believe how perfectly Shea had captured Philip K. Dick. So perhaps by ignoring the “facts” we arrived at something close to the real truth.

5) You’re connected to an in-progress adaptation of Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said. Can you give us any updates on this project? It’s a much larger scale story to adapt, are you excited about this?

JAS: My producing partner Chip Rosenbloom and I also own the film rights for Flow My Tears. I have written many many drafts as different actors and directors have come onboard, stayed awhile and left. Not all that unusual in Hollywood on big budget projects. Now that RFA is finally going to be making its way into the world, I can really focus again on Flow. And, yes, that’s exciting. It’s a great story – and I’m confident that the right collaborators will find their way onboard.

6) Finally a more general question. How do you think the art and medium of film will progress over the coming decades? What are some of your futurist projections for the industry?

JAS: My predictions? Death of 35 mm film – long live digital. Bigger and bigger event movies will drive out “smaller films” leaving only the very “smallest”. For awhile at least. Than a renaissance of very personal filmmaking that will rival and surpass the seventies as a golden age! I hope to be around to take part in that! 3D will be accepted as the “norm” just like the introduction of sound and color and so there will be no real “economic benefit” since the audience will simply “expect” most movies in 3D. Storytellers will figure out how to use 3D in more artistic and subtle ways.

I would like to thank John Alan Simon for taking the time to answer these questions – and more importantly to him, Elizabeth Karr and the rest of the Radio Free Albemuth team for their tireless efforts in bringing this project to completion!

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5 Predictions for the Next 5 Years

Written on January 15, 2012 in Communications & Technology, Lifestyle & Society

It’s quite common to see prediction posts produced in January, and for a futurist blogger the draw to do one is obvious. In that regard, and in the spirit of IBM’s Next 5 in 5 approach, here are five predictions for the next five years:

1) Smartphone integration

Let’s start with an easy one. The smartphone is becoming a ubiquitous tool, and their usage will extend to pretty much every aspect of our lives over the next five years. Indeed, you can make a solid argument that for many of us it’s already there. What we are going to see is a complete integration with our daily activities, and there’s a lot of thoughts out there on the future of smartphone design and utility.

The smartphone will become a more regular form of contactless payment. Coupled with access to your spending habits through other means such as loyalty programmes, your shopping experiences will be tailored to your presence in a store even before you step inside. This data will enable stores to directly highlight particular new items or deals that you are likely to be interested in, and indicate them and their in-store location to your handset. The extension of advertising will be used to entice you into stores as you walk by, and a number of sleek and attractive interfaces that collect this data from various sources in the one place will be designed to ensure that the information is neither annoying or overwhelming.

Fast food, restaurant and supermarket purchases will be made even faster, and indeed we’re already seeing these kind of applications, and the concept of a separate loyalty card will become obsolete as you will develop separate accounts for the many different stores that you purchase items for and they will all be stored via your smartphone in the ever-widening data cloud that moves with you.

The connectivity will continue as you travel, and will interface with the more comprehensive systems in place in your home and office. We’re already seeing the emergence of voice-recognition interaction whilst driving, and this is starting to be coupled with the streaming of your smartphone interface in your car’s dashboard. By the time you enter your home, the movements and updates from a day’s worth of digital interaction will already be synced with your home network and your focus will then shift over to the tablet as the central hub device. The key word here is integration, and the smartphone provides the key to integrating all of your movements with your digital homespace; whilst vice versa assimilating your digital identity with the various work and leisure spaces you engage with as you move through the day.

2) Smart TVs and the integrated home entertainment system

We’re starting to hear a lot more now of ‘Smart TVs’, and within the next five years this is something that is likely to gain considerable momentum. This will go beyond merely the internet-connectivity notion of ‘Smart TV’ that currently dominates the marketplace, with moves towards a more interactive and personal experience. If the thought of your TV having a motion and sound sensor attached to it bothers you somewhat, consider already the move into this arena with the likes of Microsoft’s Kinect. At the very least, your television is going to become a much more responsive and dynamic medium then the passive role it has played up until this point – and this will be coupled with it responding to your face, movements and words.

Hard media such as DVDs or Blu-Rays will be on the way out at the top end of the market, and instead this content will be streamed directly to your television through high-bandwidth internet connections. This will negate the need for any kind of storage space, as all of it will be on the cloud, and will also negate the need to have separate boxes of hardware sitting under your TV.

The videogame platforms of the future will be subscription based services (a present example of which is the OnLive platform that, although not without teething problems, is a solid proof of concept). Digital distribution models in general will be pushed strongly, as they overcome the primary developer concerns of piracy and second-hand sales eating into profits. When this integration occurs, you can expect to see Microsoft release a television and Sony will push big for this move as they face rapidly decreasing profit margins and market share. There’s more news recently of the Google TV service, and there have been rumours of a dedicated Apple TV floating about for a while. A move into this area from the king of consumer confidence-building will push the whole thing into overdrive.

We’re not going to see this eventuate completely within the next five years; but the foundations are already in place and are waiting primarily for bandwidth and consumer demand. Streaming movies and music in particular will gain a lot of momentum, and these systems will be built directly into televisions rather than require separate boxes or equipment. The next generation of videogame consoles will still follow the traditional model, but I’d hazard a guess that the generation after that will move away from physical media and pricey-to-produce hardware in favour of cloud-based streaming services.

3) Social Media web-browsing

Facebook will release a web browser. That’s the short version. It’s almost inevitable that there will be a successful attempt to frame our web browsing experience through our social media identity. At the moment this relationship exists the other way around, but there will be a move to shift this perspective. There are already attempts to do this, such as RockMelt backed by the founder of Netscape, but Google will likely soon lead the way with this as they attempt to salvage (or build upon, depending on your level of cynicism) Google + and the many other aspects of their online platform that they currently offer. I’m surprised that Google hasn’t already built a version of Chrome around this concept, but it can’t be far off.

Because of how it has evolved, social media emerged as an online service; but the sphere has increasingly manifested as a digital platform in and of itself. Facebook has been trying to extend its reach beyond the closed-doors of its community for a while now – see Facebook Comments and Recommendations as an immediate case in point. In addition, we have the increasing use of geolocational and augmented reality aspects of social media that don’t require a traditional browser and rely instead on new mobile interface paradigms. As we move towards a semantic web framework, the capacity for our social media identity to be the lens through which we view and contextualise disparate online elements will be pushed. Our emotional attachment to social media identities will almost assure that a well-considered and designed attempt at this will succeed.

Obviously, such a move has the same worrying implications for online privacy that have already been highlighted over the last few years; but like many of these concerns they will be ignored by the majority of web users who choose convenience and accessibility over autonomy and privacy. In addition, a great deal of time will be spent by companies such as Facebook and Google to build in genuine and secure privacy settings and data protection promises (whilst at the same time still promoting the idea of a true-identity web experience as preferable). The alternative is for more open-sourced, decentralised developments to emerge; something which will no doubt occur but whether they can gain enough traction in the hearts and minds of the general public will be a contest worth paying close attention to.

4) Crowd-sourced Politics

We already have all of the technological components available to more accurately and widely canvas public opinion on various political and social agendas. Over the last few years we’ve seen moves towards government petitioning systems in the US and elsewhere, and experimentation with forms of direct democracy that are facilitated via online platforms.

There will always be a demand for this kind of participation in decision making, and an increasing malaise if we continue to ignore this demand as evidenced by the inclusive aspirations of the Occupy movement (which have arguably begun to lose focus on this important issue, to their detriment). Ultimately, representation of this sort can only really be brought to scale effectively through the ideological underpinnings working in close tandem with technological implementation.

What will distinguish such a platform from any other site that has come before (such as user-voted platforms likes Reddit or Digg) is that they will be legitimised by their relationship with both local community and government processes and such efforts will also become more ubiquitous in their usage. Over the next five years, simple and secure polling systems that achieve large citizen uptake will broaden the validity of certain political positions and government programmes; Real-time, large-scale audience feedback to things such as political debates will become commonplace; and more complicated systems will be explored that could enable direct influence on an increasing number of future initiatives. The path that Iceland has embarked upon represents this concept in direct action, and the We The People petition system in the US is experimenting with technological solutions.

In the end, problems will always arise when you rely solely upon basic majority rule systems, and therefore we need to develop a more nuanced concept of what direct democracy means. What needs to be garnered from these recent experiments are some genuine and honest critiques of where the process works and, perhaps more importantly, where the idealism has failed to bring about truly productive results. Expect a lot more work on this from many different areas over the next five years.

5) Data Architecture and Visualisation rises to the top

The exponentially growing levels of data in modern society is astonishing when you begin to get to grips with it. We are now creating more data every day or two then we have collectively since the dawn of civilisation – let’s just let that sink in for a little bit.

The question now revolves around what we do with it all. Most of the data surge comes from user-created content that many would argue has little value outside of the local contexts of the individuals creating and consuming it; but there are wider social trends available in this date. Not least of which are the commercial avenues that data mining is capable of, and they have been discussed at length and will increasingly form the central profit model of many companies.

But in a more general sense, the need to make sense of vast amounts of raw data – to make it usable not just in an algorithmic sense (as in the case with data mining) but in a end-user, visually digestible manner. Platforms are already in use, and increasingly being developed, to allow various sectors to more effectively harness the power of information. The biggest push for this, as always, comes from the intelligence needs of military, police and government (GeoTime is a good example in regards to locational data). From military intelligence, to helping solve local crimes, to creating more efficient public sector workflows; the correct and effective use of data will play a key role not just in the next five years but from here on out.

On a more individual level, the need to create interfaces and visual graphics that help us make sense of the growing amount of data in our own lives will become central – and in some ways will also be invisible. This begins with filtering web searches, news feeds and other information streams according to your preferences and activity profile. Extends into creative and inspiring ways of using data to more effectively put across information and ideas (this great talk from David McCandless at TED explores some of those uses and is definitely worth watching). This is all driven by commercial applications for data mining and building effective platforms for companies to interface with the resulting information.

What we will see towards the end of the next five years is the culmination of this growing culture of data exchange into the public sphere. The manipulation of digital data in its many guises is generally considered to be a subset of information technology. The tools to put this into the hands of an increasing number of people will be developed and pushed over the next five years. Consider the impact that software such as Photoshop or iMovie have had on the current media revolution, now extend that into the realm of data use and analysis and we can begin to see how important a role such things will play in the democratisation of data in the post-digital age.

Do you agree or disagree with these predictions, and what are the implications of them? If you have any more five-year predictions to add, please do comment!

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