I was about to write a post that used CES as the backdrop to look at what’s next for technology but Sarah Rotman Epps from Forrester has already done a terrific job of covering much of what I had planned to with her post Beyond Tablets: The Next Five Computing Form Factors – so I’ll riff off that and add one factor at the end that I think is going to be a major trend in the coming years. If you’re already read Sarah’s post, skip past the second video.
Sarah points to wearable devices as a new frontier and I’d wholeheartedly agree with that. Nick Bilton wrote a piece earlier this week in the New York Times that speculated at this trend too and I responded by pointing out that Microsoft has a lot of work going on here. In fact, if you’re at CES swing by our booth as I’ll have something to show you on that front. I’d also recommend reading a recent piece in The Economist which talks of the rise of the maker movement. This is fuelling the wearable’s markets and has some interesting implications for entrepreneurs who are handy with a 3D printer, Arduino (or .Net Gadgeteer) board – you no longer need a ton of cash and a big production line to make stuff. As Chris Anderson of Wired said
“The tools of factory production, from electronics assembly to 3D printing, are now available to individuals, in batches as small as a single unit”
Next up on Sarah’s list is Embedded devices and once again, I’m in total agreement. Of the five form factors Sarah mentions, I think this is the most important one.
As the cost of sensors has dropped, and the range of them has risen we’re moving towards a world of “intelligent systems” as Microsoft and IDC like to call it. I’ve blogged about this numerous times and was even quoted in the Wall Street Journal on the topic last week in relation to NFL football. Suffice it to say that we’re going to see an explosion in this area over the next few years and it’ll make our lives better – from simple things like sensors in cars that can talk to intelligent highways and route us home, to sensors in our homes that use machine learning to intelligently consume power or enable us to move our entertainment seamlessly from device to device and surface to surface. The Nest learning thermostat is a great example of this starting to occur already.
As with many of these trends, they become intertwined and pretty quickly so embedded devices will also be part of the wearable trend and the emergence of surfaces, third on Sarah’s list are a key part of the embedded devices trend for me.
Surfaces and flexible displays (fourth on Sarah’s list) has long been a topic of interest here on NEXT, not least because of Microsoft Surface itself but the broader work going on across Microsoft to advance this field. I’ve talked about Stevie Bathiche and his teams work at length so be sure to check that out as they have a technology called wedge optics that will holds the key to unlocking some amazing scenarios for thin, transparent interactive screens. No surprise that he’s one of them guys behind Surface 1.0 and if you’re at CES, come find me….I have some Surface 2.0 action to share. As Sarah says, it’s a broad landscape and where it goes ultimately is that we’ll eventually be buying surfaces just as we buy wallpaper now – from the hardware store on a roll, not from the electronic store by the inch. That’s a long way off I know but sometimes the future arrives faster than you think. The 2009 and 2011 vision videos from the Microsoft Office team give you a glimpse of what we think this enables. The videos also give you a good sense of where we see the fifth item on Sarah’s list – mini projectors – being used. I’ll confess that this is the one I’m most skeptical about as I think other displays capabilities will negate the need for mini-projectors built in to devices.
So what would I add to the five that Sarah posted as new form factors? Not a lot to be honest as this captures a lot of what we’ve been talking about here on NEXT for a while. I think the role of the gaming console will see dramatic change but that’s hardly new to anyone who follows technology closely. The other form factor I may add is invisibility. I know that sounds a little weird but there is another big trend I’ll be writing about soon and it’s called “context”. It’s actually due in part to the embedded and sensor explosion but also the trend of big data. You put these two things together and you suddenly have an enormous amount of context that can be used to remove technology entirely. My PC knows which is my favorite airline, it knows when I’m planning to fly to the UK and Bing knows when is the optimal time to fly. Put all of those things together and very soon I should not even have to perform a 30 minute online session to book flights and all the associated nonsense – technology will just do it for me, or at least deliver me the right answer on a plate and say “click here” to approve. As soon as I hit “approve” it just learned one more thing about me and got some more context. It’s not unlike the Nest system above – but imagine if you had the option (that’s important) to do that with everything. Your real world shopping, your healthcare, your restaurant bookings, your favorite movies. The signs have been there for a while in services like Pandora and with apps like Flipboard but context is now everywhere – when it can be swept up, mashed up and used intelligently the technology in our lives is set to become more invisible and work on our behalf. That I personally find VERY exciting.
With that, I’m off to test out the invisibility cloak I bought today as a stocking filler. If you’re at CES, come find me in the Microsoft booth – it’ll be pretty obvious where I am when you get there. If not, come back here in 2012 to hear more about context as a mega trend and what Microsoft it up to in this area.
