FaceBook Places up on iPhone this week is another check-in reality check for Location Based Services (LBS) growth.
The interesting thing about this new launch is that Facebook partnered with the two leading LBS players of the moment - Foursquare and Gowalla. Yelp who is famous for its local reviews LBS service and Booyah have also jumped into the Facebook's Places party.
From the outside, it's all about the beauty of physically connecting with your friends thanks to the power of location-aware social networks. This video posted by Facebook sets this friendly ambiance all along:
However, in my view, beyond this friendly facade filled with plenty of 360-degree, fine-toothed smiles begins the non so friendly standard war for social check-in ownership.
Check-in growth means big bucks.
In the end, LBS is just a new marketing tool to create a new depth of marketing segmentation, one that traces our social habits from the real world back to the check-in owner's databases. By overlaying some sort of loyalty or incentive marketing program over our digitalized real-world consumption patterns, as a marketer you are likely to get higher return on your marketing dollars than what you would traditionally achieve through mass media.
Now, back to Places. It sounds that the check-in ownership definitely helped to shape up the structure of this new LBS deal. Not all stakeholders have appeared to strike the same kind of agreement with Facebook. It doesn't look like check-ins are co-owned all the time. What I mean by that is that you may check-in through Places but that information may only belong to Facebook and may not trickle back down to the LBS originator. Say that you are an heavy Foursquare user and that you transfered all your check-ins to Facebook places through the new Places API (that one-way transfer is allowed apparently), if you check-in Places after the transfer, I am not sure that Foursquare gets that informaton back...? Yelp did get a two-way deal, not sure Foursquare and Gowalla did but they may have agreed on a one-way deal as it gives them great exposure to the 500M+ Facebook users for greater service awareness.
Are we on for a check-in standard war on the socnets?
It seems like we are headed into a mosaic-patterned LBS horizon. What if you start building points for a given brand using Gowalla? Do your branded check-ins apply in Foursquare or do you have to build two seperate collections of check-ins?
I don't believe that there is any check-in standard in place so far. On top of that, overlay the segmentation at the mobile phone hardware/software levels and you get a supper dupper LBmeSS.
What about open standards?
Wouldn't the check-me-in pie be much larger should standard check-ins be discussed and shared among all major players of the LBS market?
This reminds me of the GSM days in a way. Back in the beginning of the 80's, in 1982, a new digital wireless group composed of super smart wireless experts came to life. This was the "Groupe Special Mobile". It took about 10 years for the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) to become the "2G" standard which gave birth to the first 2G network in Finland in 1991.
Today, GSM is the technology that is most globally adopted. One of the main reasons why it has known such a phenomenal penetration is because the target audicnce (the wireless carriers in that case) had the flexibility to build their GSM networks from different GSM equipment suppliers. For example, you could elect to build some of your radio sub-system with Nokia while your network sub-system could be bought from Siemens. The GSM standard guaranteed that the different pieces within the network could openly talk to one another.
Yes, it did take some time to get to the GSM standard, but in the end it openly fluidified the target audience value proposition by lowering long-term risk and reducing acquisition cost, as a result, the technology adoption rate went banana around the world.
That's why, I am wondering...
Shoudn't all of the current LBS players step out of their walled garden and raise up their heads to the formidable potential of future check-in open standards?
Consumers would tremendously benefit from technology-agnostic check-ins and so, I believe, would the LBS ecosystem as a whole. LBS would be turned into Location Be Sustainable! :-)
As I was laying out my thoughts on a napkin for this post this morning, I came accross a tweet from @loic. It struck my attention as Loic mentioned the iBody appstore.
Loic takes the stale one-dimensional physical "check-in" dimension into a richer multi-dimensional approach where other sets of data, related to our biometrics, could flow into the socnets through relevant APIs.
You can check out Loic's blog post on the subject. Here is the video that he posted:
So, if more and more digital dimensions from our lives are bound to flow into the future streams of the emerging social networks, don't open standards make even more sense?
Open platforms, open standards may be the sustainable routes to open innovation.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Monday, August 9, 2010
Digital Love is Forever
What happens when Artificial Intelligence (AI) meets Social Networking (SN)?
By 2035, the supercomputer power will be such that AI might be becoming a tangible reality. The IBM Blue Gene project certainly represents a contemporary step along the path towards that intriguing horizon.
Over the past few weeks, as an exponentially growing number of Internet users around the world are increasingly digitalizing the stories of their physical lives, I have come to ponder what will happen once we are able to upload our minds into the SN clouds.
AI is an old concept, it actually dates back to the ancient times of Greek mythology. As I was trying to find more recent representations of AI, my friend Jorge made me aware of a movie released in 1986 called Short Circuit starring Ally Sheedy and Steve Guttenburg and directed by John Badham.
$9.99 later I had bought it on iTunes for my viewing pleasure. The movie is definitely cheesy, yet insightful for its time.
The concept of AI is a leading anchor of the movie's plot. The hero is "Number 5", a military robot that is hit by lightning which causes him to escape the lab where it was created, and, to keep it short, engage in a light adventure with an animal-lover (Ally Sheedy) and the PhD who created him (Steve Guttenburg).
"Number 5" develops impressive Emotional Intelligence (EI) capabilities. Dancing being the ultimate form of human communication and a highly emotional pillar of most cultures around the world, I thought I would share how our hero stimulates its electronic neurons dancing to the tune of a well-know Saturday nigh hit from the 80s' (Go directly to 1 min and 35 sec in the video --> I can't get to have the time tag work to do it automatically for you...):
How is that for AI?
The movie was produced at a time well remote from the Internet era, Number 5's EI looks more like an app downloaded from the human world surrounding him. The other way around, an upload, wouldn't have made much sense at that time.
Now, what happens if around 2035 we are able to upload our mind to our Facebook (or the prevailing mobile optical SN at that time) page and give it free reigns to manage our social interaction with our family and friends?
In 10 generations from us, how will our grand, grand ... grand (9x) children feel about having the opportunity to interact, even dance in real-time with the AI entity that backed up the mind, culture, personality, and life history of their grand, grand ... grand (9x) parents?
Would Digital Love be Forever?
By 2035, the supercomputer power will be such that AI might be becoming a tangible reality. The IBM Blue Gene project certainly represents a contemporary step along the path towards that intriguing horizon.
Over the past few weeks, as an exponentially growing number of Internet users around the world are increasingly digitalizing the stories of their physical lives, I have come to ponder what will happen once we are able to upload our minds into the SN clouds.
AI is an old concept, it actually dates back to the ancient times of Greek mythology. As I was trying to find more recent representations of AI, my friend Jorge made me aware of a movie released in 1986 called Short Circuit starring Ally Sheedy and Steve Guttenburg and directed by John Badham.
$9.99 later I had bought it on iTunes for my viewing pleasure. The movie is definitely cheesy, yet insightful for its time.
The concept of AI is a leading anchor of the movie's plot. The hero is "Number 5", a military robot that is hit by lightning which causes him to escape the lab where it was created, and, to keep it short, engage in a light adventure with an animal-lover (Ally Sheedy) and the PhD who created him (Steve Guttenburg).
"Number 5" develops impressive Emotional Intelligence (EI) capabilities. Dancing being the ultimate form of human communication and a highly emotional pillar of most cultures around the world, I thought I would share how our hero stimulates its electronic neurons dancing to the tune of a well-know Saturday nigh hit from the 80s' (Go directly to 1 min and 35 sec in the video --> I can't get to have the time tag work to do it automatically for you...):
How is that for AI?
The movie was produced at a time well remote from the Internet era, Number 5's EI looks more like an app downloaded from the human world surrounding him. The other way around, an upload, wouldn't have made much sense at that time.
Now, what happens if around 2035 we are able to upload our mind to our Facebook (or the prevailing mobile optical SN at that time) page and give it free reigns to manage our social interaction with our family and friends?
In 10 generations from us, how will our grand, grand ... grand (9x) children feel about having the opportunity to interact, even dance in real-time with the AI entity that backed up the mind, culture, personality, and life history of their grand, grand ... grand (9x) parents?
Would Digital Love be Forever?
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Time to dive in the pull!
Social Networking (SN) has overpassed pornography as the #1 web activity!
That's insane.
A decade ago, I had the great opportunity to be part of the team that started the first ever broadband wireless ISP in France. We were targeting SMBs at the time, and although some of the trend may be cultural and our target audience was purely professional organizations, I do confirm that we had about 80% of the our traffic related to pornography.
SN has grown at a 48% compound annual growth rate in 2010 over 2009, and a slew of indicators seem to point us toward the feeling that singularity definitely apply to the long tail of SN too.
Sometimes, some of the SN videos posted around the Internet may seem way too flashy, like this one:
Nonethess, it is undeniable that the sooner marketers will understand how to leverage the pull power of SN and forget about the dusty ways of wasting hundreds of billions of dollars in traditional marketing, the better off they'll be.
Getting there will certainly be a bumpy ride for many.
There definitely is no magic recipe in my view as an entrepreneurial mindset may be the key to getting it right, and it will certainly involve tapping into the unexpected opportunities of serendipity. Marketers should become VC-minded, investing in a diversified portfolio of SN strategies and converging towards what makes it a win-win for both the communities and the brand.
I believe there is too much binary thinking going on associated with the latest SN craze. C'mon, it's a learning process and it's not because you have some sort of brand face on Facebook that you are instantaneously moving the needle in the right direction. You may actually be moving it counter-clockwise if you have not taken a few steps back to think out long term expectations from the communities and operational implications, therefore cost, to your organization.
A few weeks ago, I came across this post on TechCrunch.
I am not the kind of guy to generally react to push marketing; however, I went ahead and purchased the electronic version of the book. Pretty cool...
In a nutshell, the authors are advocating the fact that "small moves, smartly made, can set big things in motion". To do that they claim that there are three key levels in the pull, three diving boards:
- Access (resources through communities)
- Attract (the organic resources from the communities)
- Achieve (I would parallel this to building the sense of common purpose between you/your brand and the communities)
I paused for a moment and I realized that this is pretty much what my bro and his team have learned the hard way as they are growing their community-based film production company touscoprod.com
From the onset, they built the tools to access the film lover communities. There were no barriers whatsover as the only moderator was my bro alone. It was a few years ago and the fancy features offered by some fancy user moderation companies these days didn't exist.
Well, it was actually a great opportunity in disguise not to have these digital tools firsthand.
As a matter of fact, while interacting directly with the unsensored communites, my bro was able to understand the power of real-time pull interaction. Yes, they definitely found themselves in extremely delicate situations where consumers were extremely irrate about things that are normally being dealt with in a private "consumer service" kind of setting.
It took time, a lot of time, a lot of patience to publically address these consumers' points of pain. But integrity and openess were the key ingredients to turn around what would primarily look like brand/consumer adversity into sustainable brand/consumer friendship that virally propagates through the communities.
In a word, negative pull interaction is the long term open door to sustainable consumer loyalty.
The problem is that quite a few marketers don't seem to understand that. You cannot push your marketing in a SN right off the bat because it is going to bounce back in your face and make you loose trust. Build the trust first, and sollicit the value, don't push it!
Once brands get that, sooner rather than later, they will be able to attract advocates from the community that are going to act as exponential pull powers. I wouldn't be surprised that in a few years from now, brands will actually start hiring based on the added value of each individual as a contributing entity to the community. Imagine some sort of Foursquare hiring mayorship for your brand based on added value behaviors.
At that point, the overarching "sense of purpose" will achieve unprecedented return on your marketing dollars, this will be a quantum leap in relation to the famous 10x return on direct marketing investment touted at any Direct Marketing Association conference around the world.
It's about time to dive in the pull!
That's insane.
A decade ago, I had the great opportunity to be part of the team that started the first ever broadband wireless ISP in France. We were targeting SMBs at the time, and although some of the trend may be cultural and our target audience was purely professional organizations, I do confirm that we had about 80% of the our traffic related to pornography.
SN has grown at a 48% compound annual growth rate in 2010 over 2009, and a slew of indicators seem to point us toward the feeling that singularity definitely apply to the long tail of SN too.
Sometimes, some of the SN videos posted around the Internet may seem way too flashy, like this one:
Nonethess, it is undeniable that the sooner marketers will understand how to leverage the pull power of SN and forget about the dusty ways of wasting hundreds of billions of dollars in traditional marketing, the better off they'll be.
Getting there will certainly be a bumpy ride for many.
There definitely is no magic recipe in my view as an entrepreneurial mindset may be the key to getting it right, and it will certainly involve tapping into the unexpected opportunities of serendipity. Marketers should become VC-minded, investing in a diversified portfolio of SN strategies and converging towards what makes it a win-win for both the communities and the brand.
I believe there is too much binary thinking going on associated with the latest SN craze. C'mon, it's a learning process and it's not because you have some sort of brand face on Facebook that you are instantaneously moving the needle in the right direction. You may actually be moving it counter-clockwise if you have not taken a few steps back to think out long term expectations from the communities and operational implications, therefore cost, to your organization.
A few weeks ago, I came across this post on TechCrunch.
I am not the kind of guy to generally react to push marketing; however, I went ahead and purchased the electronic version of the book. Pretty cool...
In a nutshell, the authors are advocating the fact that "small moves, smartly made, can set big things in motion". To do that they claim that there are three key levels in the pull, three diving boards:
- Access (resources through communities)
- Attract (the organic resources from the communities)
- Achieve (I would parallel this to building the sense of common purpose between you/your brand and the communities)
I paused for a moment and I realized that this is pretty much what my bro and his team have learned the hard way as they are growing their community-based film production company touscoprod.com
From the onset, they built the tools to access the film lover communities. There were no barriers whatsover as the only moderator was my bro alone. It was a few years ago and the fancy features offered by some fancy user moderation companies these days didn't exist.
Well, it was actually a great opportunity in disguise not to have these digital tools firsthand.
As a matter of fact, while interacting directly with the unsensored communites, my bro was able to understand the power of real-time pull interaction. Yes, they definitely found themselves in extremely delicate situations where consumers were extremely irrate about things that are normally being dealt with in a private "consumer service" kind of setting.
It took time, a lot of time, a lot of patience to publically address these consumers' points of pain. But integrity and openess were the key ingredients to turn around what would primarily look like brand/consumer adversity into sustainable brand/consumer friendship that virally propagates through the communities.
In a word, negative pull interaction is the long term open door to sustainable consumer loyalty.
The problem is that quite a few marketers don't seem to understand that. You cannot push your marketing in a SN right off the bat because it is going to bounce back in your face and make you loose trust. Build the trust first, and sollicit the value, don't push it!
Once brands get that, sooner rather than later, they will be able to attract advocates from the community that are going to act as exponential pull powers. I wouldn't be surprised that in a few years from now, brands will actually start hiring based on the added value of each individual as a contributing entity to the community. Imagine some sort of Foursquare hiring mayorship for your brand based on added value behaviors.
At that point, the overarching "sense of purpose" will achieve unprecedented return on your marketing dollars, this will be a quantum leap in relation to the famous 10x return on direct marketing investment touted at any Direct Marketing Association conference around the world.
It's about time to dive in the pull!
Sunday, July 25, 2010
rEVolution
It was 1995, for the first time in my life, as a previledged student at Supélec in France, I had the opportunity to drive one of the very first EV (Electric Vehicle) designed by the French car manufacturer, Renault.
This rEVolution, at least in my dreamer's eyes, was the Clio Electrique and it looked like that:
Beautiful... Isn't it?
As far as key characteristics, check this out:
If you want to learn more about this disruptive product at that time, go there.
And, yes, you read that right: top speed of 60 MPH and amazing range of 45 Miles. Just enough to go buy a few fresh eggs at the open-air market in the next town and come back home, then you needed three days to reload the battery!
Well, innovation doesn't happen overnight and I was so thrilled about this first EV driving experience that I have kept on dreaming about owning an EV since then.
The BP oil spill this year, the swings in oil prices, the increase in clean tech investments, and many other economic realities such as the poor performance of traditional car makers have begun to gradually shift consumers' attention and interest towards EV. This is not a U.S. thing, it's a global thing.
Nonetheless, as a key driver of innovation, the U.S. is playing a key role in the development of the next generations of technologies that will redefine the way we are used to transporting ourselves.
In 2004, one of the guys who created PayPal - Elon Musk - co-founded Tesla Motors ( http://www.teslamotors.com ) with the purpose to drive mass EV adoption in the U.S., and globally.
From the inception of this new venture, I have been an active fan, a brand advocate as some marketers may call us as I found their mission profoundly deep and worth promoting for a better future.
Apparently, they noticed from my activity on their website that I was quite engaged, and a few weeks ago I received a call from them to test drive their Roadster. They didn't have to ask me twice, I invited my dear friends Gilles and Jorge to join in the fun, and together we went for a drive into the future of personal human transportation.
Here are Gilles' impressions after his test drive - hire a French translator if you need one :-)
For those who couldn't find a French translator, or if the video doesn't want to start, in a few words, Gilles was amazed by the quality of the experience that you can actually touch and feel as you interact with the materials of the car.
I am not quite sure Gilles would have said the same had he driven the 1995 Clio Electrique right after his Tesla Roadster test drive...
As a matter of fact, the key characteristics are quite different:
How is that about to support Ray Kurzweil's singularity principle?
Elon Musk adopted the strategic approach of targeting high income early adopters with a premium positioning product (they did the same when they launch the first GSM digital cellphones back in the 90's...) and then go down market with more affordable models and some lean operation to ramp up production. By the way, they recently announced a partnership with Toyota to just do that as they are now also pushing pre-orders on their amazing Model S.
So the comparision with the Clio may not be apple to apple because the Clio is the traditional "Monsieur Tout Le Monde" (Mr. Anyone) car in France, but still, the difference is quite "singular":
- From 21 Kw to 215 Kw, over 10x from a power standpoint!
- From 60 MPH to 125 MPH, over 2x from a top speed viewpoint!
- From 45 Miles to 245 Miles, over 5x in driving range!
- From 3 days to reload the battery to about 2 hours!
It sounds like singularity it is...
Where is the limit?
If Ray Kurzweil is right again, as he claims it in this video, we should soon be able to combine the benefits of the cloud with the disruptive breakthrough of physical technologies.
Can you imagine when we will be driving down I-95 in our Model Swhatever and download a batch of 300 extra battery miles off the solar Internet?
Fun!
This rEVolution, at least in my dreamer's eyes, was the Clio Electrique and it looked like that:
Beautiful... Isn't it?
As far as key characteristics, check this out:
| Motor | Asea Brown Boveri Separately Excited DC 21 kW 2100 U/min |
|---|---|
| Controller | ABB BA 20 |
| Batteries | 19 Saft STM - 100, 6.00 Volt, Nickel-Cadmium, Flooded |
| System Voltage | 114 Volts |
| Heater | Volvo ( Ardic ) Benzin Standheizung |
| Top Speed | 60 MPH (96 KPH) |
| Range | 45 Miles (72 Kilometers) |
If you want to learn more about this disruptive product at that time, go there.
And, yes, you read that right: top speed of 60 MPH and amazing range of 45 Miles. Just enough to go buy a few fresh eggs at the open-air market in the next town and come back home, then you needed three days to reload the battery!
Well, innovation doesn't happen overnight and I was so thrilled about this first EV driving experience that I have kept on dreaming about owning an EV since then.
The BP oil spill this year, the swings in oil prices, the increase in clean tech investments, and many other economic realities such as the poor performance of traditional car makers have begun to gradually shift consumers' attention and interest towards EV. This is not a U.S. thing, it's a global thing.
Nonetheless, as a key driver of innovation, the U.S. is playing a key role in the development of the next generations of technologies that will redefine the way we are used to transporting ourselves.
In 2004, one of the guys who created PayPal - Elon Musk - co-founded Tesla Motors ( http://www.teslamotors.com ) with the purpose to drive mass EV adoption in the U.S., and globally.
From the inception of this new venture, I have been an active fan, a brand advocate as some marketers may call us as I found their mission profoundly deep and worth promoting for a better future.
Apparently, they noticed from my activity on their website that I was quite engaged, and a few weeks ago I received a call from them to test drive their Roadster. They didn't have to ask me twice, I invited my dear friends Gilles and Jorge to join in the fun, and together we went for a drive into the future of personal human transportation.
Here are Gilles' impressions after his test drive - hire a French translator if you need one :-)
For those who couldn't find a French translator, or if the video doesn't want to start, in a few words, Gilles was amazed by the quality of the experience that you can actually touch and feel as you interact with the materials of the car.
I am not quite sure Gilles would have said the same had he driven the 1995 Clio Electrique right after his Tesla Roadster test drive...
As a matter of fact, the key characteristics are quite different:
Motor
375 volt AC induction air-cooled electric motor with variable frequency drive.| Roadster | Roadster Sport | |
|---|---|---|
| Torque | 273 lb-ft at 0-5,400 rpm | 295 lb-ft at 0-5,100 rpm |
| Horsepower | 288 hp (215 kW) at 5,000-6,000 rpm | 288 hp (215 kW) at 4,400-6,000 rpm |
| Max rpm | 14,000 rpm | 14,000 rpm |
Acceleration
| Roadster | Roadster Sport | |
|---|---|---|
| Top Speed | 125 mph | 125 mph |
| 0 to 60 mph | 3.9 seconds | 3.7 seconds |
Transmission
Single speed fixed gear. Reverse drive uses reverse direction of motor, limited to 15 mph.| Overall Final Drive | 8.28:1 |
| Final Drive Ratio | 3.12:1 |
| Range | 245 miles |
| Expected battery life | Seven-years or 100,000 miles |
| Battery heater for cold weather charging to -20 degrees Celsius | Standard |
How is that about to support Ray Kurzweil's singularity principle?
Elon Musk adopted the strategic approach of targeting high income early adopters with a premium positioning product (they did the same when they launch the first GSM digital cellphones back in the 90's...) and then go down market with more affordable models and some lean operation to ramp up production. By the way, they recently announced a partnership with Toyota to just do that as they are now also pushing pre-orders on their amazing Model S.
So the comparision with the Clio may not be apple to apple because the Clio is the traditional "Monsieur Tout Le Monde" (Mr. Anyone) car in France, but still, the difference is quite "singular":
- From 21 Kw to 215 Kw, over 10x from a power standpoint!
- From 60 MPH to 125 MPH, over 2x from a top speed viewpoint!
- From 45 Miles to 245 Miles, over 5x in driving range!
- From 3 days to reload the battery to about 2 hours!
It sounds like singularity it is...
Where is the limit?
If Ray Kurzweil is right again, as he claims it in this video, we should soon be able to combine the benefits of the cloud with the disruptive breakthrough of physical technologies.
Can you imagine when we will be driving down I-95 in our Model Swhatever and download a batch of 300 extra battery miles off the solar Internet?
Fun!
Saturday, July 17, 2010
14 in 2020
How will it be to be 14 in 2020?
In 2006, Cheryl and I had the pleasure of welcoming ilana, our first daughter, to this world. It's been amazing to see her personality develop since "daddy ordered me on his iPhone" as she would genuinely say a few weeks after speaking.
What has amazed me the most so far is how ilana has been intuitively connected to the current forms of technology. Very early on, she enjoyed coming up with new digital paintings on the screen of my phone as a way to fall asleep at night. She got a "touch" for it right away.
The other day, I realized that she was able to browse princesses' videos off YouTube by herself (which urged me to think content control earlier than I would have ever anticipated...). Any form of mouse, the legacy one with an electronic tail, or the fingertip one which is poised to becoming the regular way to go, has not managed to escape from her use for too long apparently. She also figured out on her own how to unlock my phone by swipping her finger across the screen, browse the many panels of apps (before 4.0) by sliding them out one after the other from her fingertip before getting to her favorite Sponge Bob apps, clicking on them and playing with them!
Do kids have the notion of Singularity intuitively coined into their DNA, or instead, are the Steve Jobs and co. driving disruptive innovations that make the user experience intuitively simple, even for kids?
Or could it be a combination of the two?
Well, I would vote for both, and I believe that the forms in which information will be delivered to us will increasingly look like electronic Play-Doh that will meet the unmet of our long-tail socio-cultural specificies as humans.
What's amazing about this electronic Play-Doh, let's call it "epdo", is that not only will epdo allow us to shape it the way we want, create its color the way we want to enhance and adapt its daily physical usability to our needs but also will epdo empower us to assign an ambient scent to each app, a seasonal temperature and proper level of epdo humidity, and other untangibles that will take our daily emotional usability to unprecedented heights. Let's dream!
A few years ago, as I was having that train of thoughts in a boring class as I was studying in Boston, I realized that some people already had overlapping ideas to some extent. The Morph concept was one of these representations:
In 2006, Cheryl and I had the pleasure of welcoming ilana, our first daughter, to this world. It's been amazing to see her personality develop since "daddy ordered me on his iPhone" as she would genuinely say a few weeks after speaking.
What has amazed me the most so far is how ilana has been intuitively connected to the current forms of technology. Very early on, she enjoyed coming up with new digital paintings on the screen of my phone as a way to fall asleep at night. She got a "touch" for it right away.
The other day, I realized that she was able to browse princesses' videos off YouTube by herself (which urged me to think content control earlier than I would have ever anticipated...). Any form of mouse, the legacy one with an electronic tail, or the fingertip one which is poised to becoming the regular way to go, has not managed to escape from her use for too long apparently. She also figured out on her own how to unlock my phone by swipping her finger across the screen, browse the many panels of apps (before 4.0) by sliding them out one after the other from her fingertip before getting to her favorite Sponge Bob apps, clicking on them and playing with them!
Do kids have the notion of Singularity intuitively coined into their DNA, or instead, are the Steve Jobs and co. driving disruptive innovations that make the user experience intuitively simple, even for kids?
Or could it be a combination of the two?
Well, I would vote for both, and I believe that the forms in which information will be delivered to us will increasingly look like electronic Play-Doh that will meet the unmet of our long-tail socio-cultural specificies as humans.
What's amazing about this electronic Play-Doh, let's call it "epdo", is that not only will epdo allow us to shape it the way we want, create its color the way we want to enhance and adapt its daily physical usability to our needs but also will epdo empower us to assign an ambient scent to each app, a seasonal temperature and proper level of epdo humidity, and other untangibles that will take our daily emotional usability to unprecedented heights. Let's dream!
A few years ago, as I was having that train of thoughts in a boring class as I was studying in Boston, I realized that some people already had overlapping ideas to some extent. The Morph concept was one of these representations:
Morph Concept by Nokia
In 2020, ilana will be 14 and she will still be playing with epdo!
She will never have known the complexity of the Email tyrannosaurus that drove the adoption of the Internet almost three decades before, she will be openly and securely living her physical and digital social lives flipping from one to the other through body language connectors.
Is that a dream?
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