Part 5: Loneliness 101
As for the final part of the series, rather then draw my own conclusions I have compiled a short list of videos showcasing our near future. If you wish to draw conclusions of how your future would look like, pay close attention to the newspapers, music, tv, eCommerce and augmented reality.
A Day Made of Glass. Technologies available today.
Future vision 2020 – Microsoft
The Internet of Things – Dr. John Barrett (TEDx Talks)
Part 4: Why Augmented Reality?
Interactive Multimedia, 3D Sound, Glass Monitors, Smart Clothing, Smart Materials and Augmented Reality, are just a few technologies that are setting the standard for the next generations.
IKEA using augmented reality
Advertising & Ecommerce Power-Up
Augmented Reality is very much reality but augmented when looking through a smart mobile, tablet or Google Glass. The apps that have already taken advantage of augmented reality had proven to be very interactive, even entertaining.
My.2.Cents: e-Commerce e-Commerce e-Commerce
I believe the retail industry would be affected by the Augmented Reality. The ability to place a new piece of furniture in your room, paint the room walls or even trying on different clothes in a augmented reality environment, would turn the retail industry upside down. eCommerce would become very interactive and possibly much cheaper to maintain then a retail shop.
I don’t really like this part about the future. One third of the population has Vitamin D deficiency due to the lack of sun. The convenience of augmented reality and its e-Commerce experience gives us less and less reason to get out of the house. The shopping experience, the touch, feel and the smell of the products will surely be missed if the shopping centres would close due to the lack of business. So, how would a day would look like in the near future?
The coming 2014 U.S. Retail Apocalypse
To be continued next week (last part, Loneliness 101) …
A beautiful 8 min. animated documentary by Melih Bilgil
Part 3: The diversification of information age
There is much to say about the Internet, but in broad terms it is nothing more then a network or networks, ever growing, ever expanding. With the technological advances in the recent years, we come from owning a personal computer to multiple Internet-enabled devices. From TV’s, gaming consoles, work laptops, home computers, tablets, media centres, smart phones and the list goes on.
Printing Industries Slowly Dying
Yellow Pages are now less then half the size of what they used to be. The Age – a major Australian newspaper – had just sold its headquarters due to their diminishing sales in recent years. The printed directory maps are a real commodity these days. The printing industry is not looking good at all. The less we buy paper products, the less demand will be, hence the price of paper may soon increase due to the lack of demand.
However, we still need paper. At least for when we do some cleaning or go to the bathroom…
Cheeky Ad for Le Trèfle toilet paper
My.2.Cents: Shopping at your fingertips
So who will be next that will be affected by the Internet devices and faster download speeds? The fashion industry. Why bother go shopping when you can purchase online with free delivery, 24/7 customer service and free returns policy with no questions asked?
I like this idea of shopping, searching, doing all tasks at the click of my devices, but I still can’t see myself buying all my clothes online. Not yet anyways. Who knows? Maybe augmented reality would change that?
To be continued next week (part4, Why Augmented Reality?)…
Part 2: Video killed the radio star!
Today we have tv’s in the living room, bedroom, car and a few of us even on mobile phones. However, there is limited usage of tv when people are travelling, working, doing sports or just studying. So contrary to The Buggles prophesy, video didn’t kill the radio star…
Clash of the Titans
The tv had a much slower development then the radio, but thanks John Logie, a brilliant Scottish inventor, in 1923 the moving picture was born. The tv’s got got colour, size increased and quality improved. Sony saw the opportunity to introduce the Betamax for home users 1965. This changed the user behaviour when watching tv. People were able to program the Betamax and record tv shows when they were away. The market started to be real competitive and the first war began. It was JVC vs Sony. JVC had produced the VHS and Sony the Betamax. JVC won due to the open licensing cost of the technology and the recording time of the VHS tapes.
Clash of the Titans (round 2)
Sony was not done yet. After VHS, the digital age come along. VCD come on the market shortly, but was quickly outclassed by the DVD. The war of standards was brewing again. This time it was Toshiba vs Sony. Toshiba produced HD DVD backed up by Microsoft and Sony produced Blu-Ray backed up by Java. The launch of Playstation 3, signing of Target, Blockbuster, Wal-Mart and the cheap royalty price per Blu-Ray disks made the major film studios to choose Sony. Sony had won this battle, but for how long?
With the Internet becoming faster; and noticeably much faster in the recent years, movies were now downloaded in a matter of minutes. Sony saw themselves that 50GB Blu-Ray disks were no longer an option for people to record their favourite tv shows, so they introduced high-capacity HDD in their Blu-Ray Recorders.
R.I.P. Local Movie Rentals and Book Shops
Soon after the introduction of the VCR, video rental shops were on the rise. People were hiring and buying movies. That continued well with the DVD and the Blu-Ray, until a few years ago when Internet had reached speeds of ADSL2+. As the movies were downloaded in a matter of minutes, people soon stopped going to the video shops. In Nov 2013, the biggest video rental shops Blockbuster announced its closing of doors. With at least two tv’s in every house, people were no longer choosing books as their main source of entertainment. This was a drastic change in consumer behaviour and besides the video shops, the book shops were going out of business as well. When the rest of the world catches up with the Internet speeds, we will surely see a decline in Blu-Ray sales and ultimately the last standard of recording on physical media as we know it.
My.2.Cents: TV Onslaught!
Traditional TV will die. Dead, Finito, Terminat, Fin. With the rise of fiber and 5G networks (Australia, hint, hint: Singapore, Hong Kong and Romania are reaping the rewards already), the shows will be distributed directly over the Internet directly to your home from the major film studios. There is one thing to broadcast a show to 5-6 million people and there is something else to broadcast a show to 60-100million people world-wide. The traditional and pay-tv stations with the exception those stations covering live events and news, would need to brace themselves, as they will be wiped out in favour of on-demand tv.
Personally I like the future, especially watching live shows in different languages from different regions is a dream come true. All is good, but then having all this entertainment at my finger-tips is that to much temptation to stay home and watch more tv? Will I have the will to overcome becoming a couch-potato?
To be continued next week (part3, The diversification of information age)
Ghostbusters movie scene. It takes a nutty scientist to say “Print is dead” in 1984.
Part 1: Radio Onslaught!
Print is dead. Well, not really. I hardly see people buying newspapers in the morning, there are less and less book shops around and as for the music shops they are a rare commodity these days. There has been talks of paper-less society since the late 1970’s, but fear not, paper is not dead yet.
A brief history
Paper was really expensive to be mass-produced until 19th century. Thanks to the Fourdrinier paper making machine, newspapers and magazines started being printed. Print was the only communication method until the arrival of the radio. In 1910, USA when a broadcast station started transmitting in AM frequencies and soon after FM was introduced. Around 1990’s the Satellite Radio was launched and allowed for the first digital broadcasting around North America, Africa and Asia. It didn’t take long until this form of radio was superseded by digital radio.
Internet radio was also introduced much earlier then digital radio, however it relied on the Internet to transmit the signal to its audience. Since 2000, radio stations such Pandora, Spotify or SoundCloud created a much more intuitive way of listening to radio. The new radio stations, allowed the listener to choose a genre of music and the radio station plays musical selections of that genre. The listener would be able skip or repeat the song at any time.
R.I.P. Local Music Shops
The radio didn’t have an impact on the paper industry even when digital radio was introduced, but it can’t be said the same for the arrival of the on-demand radio. In the last 4 years, the on-demand radio expanded from listening and changing stations, to a more interactive platform of communication. The listener was able to buy the preferred song/album or even carry a whole music library with them. On-demand radio stations had impacted the production of Vinyl and CD’s and incidentally put many record shops out of business. The print industry was being affected as well with less CD’s and Vinyl covers being printed.
My.2.Cents: Radio Onslaught!
As soon the car industry will retrofit everyday cars with on-demand radio stations, it won’t be long until we see normal radio stations available on your car stereo as well. Personal stereos as we know them will disappear. The stereos in your home, car or otherwise will have internet connection and your music library will be stored on your HDD or in the cloud. You will have your music library with you all times no matter where you are.
So what does that mean for the future? AM will disappear all together. FM will stay for a little while longer and that will disappear in favour to DAB. DAB before being fully upgraded by DAB+, will be outclassed in a very short time by Internet radio. DRM or DRM+ won’t take off at all, even in small towns/cities. Although on-demand radio is here to stay, I see very few radio stations that would survive the onslaught of what is yet to come. Broadcasting simultaneously in FM, DAB, DAB+ and Internet Broadcasting is not a cheap exercise for any radio station.
The music shops will disappear all-together and yes the local music distributors will be gone too. The future of music is on-demand radios, internet shops and major music distributors. The design industry will need to adapt their focus to multimedia design. If you live in countries such as Hong Kong, Singapore or Romania, you can take advantage of this technology tomorrow due to their fast Internet speeds.
Personally I like the future, I like the idea of on-demand radio music, I like the fact that I would be listening to music in one room, go the kitchen, outside, in the car, at the gym, on the slopes, shopping or going to sleep to the rhythm of my choice. I wonder though with so much music around my life in the future, how would this affect my quiet time?
To be continued next week (part2, Video killed the Radio Star!)…