Prognosticating

Here’s a challenge for you: what will communication look like in 3 - 5 years?

Two of my housemates are currently studying Moving Image Design, and that is their design brief for a theorhetical ad for Orange (project is sponsored by Orange and winner takes home a small prize for their efforts). Last night around the dinner table we had a chat about it, and actually found it incredibly difficult to pick what would happen in 5 years.

If it was 50 years from now, there’d be no problem - you could dream up pretty much anything (within reason) and it’d sound plausible. But 3 - 5 years means it’s just beyond the technology horizon, and so requires a little bit of thought and a little bit of imagination, but within limits. 5 years ago, wireless networking was at its nascent beginnings. 3 years ago, phones were just beginning to hit their strides as multimedia devices, though it all looks pretty familiar really (remember, it was only 2005).

Before you say it, the iPhone - not that revolutionary; my dad had a touchscreen PDA 3 years ago. Sure, it wasn’t as slim or as fancy as the iPhone, but it still did (does) the whole mail, web, music, videos, and all that song-and-dance that the iPhone does (except the iPhone does it better, to be sure). Not that revolutionary.

Probably the most fun thing we came up with before we devolved into looking at funny ads on YouTube was an OLED shirt with constantly moving images, such as, for example, waves sloshing around whenever the wearer moves.

What do you reckon communication will be like in 5 years?