The YouTube video is from 2010 and it shows the world as imagined by TAT in 2014. . It is clear from the video that the future is hard to predict for several reasons. First, it is hard to predict the pace of progress. The video shows the future four years ahead yet we still have not caught up with it after eight years. Second, it is not always clear which technologies might win in the long-term. For example, it seems to me from the video that TAT probably did not foresee the dominance of Cloud Computing now. Cloud Computing is one of the reasons I do not see smart phones as the data platform of the future because I do not see data to exist in physical devices but in the Cloud. Similarly, I expect the future technologies to look nothing like the smart phones shown in the video. I am not oblivious to the fact that I have seen many other videos of future technologies some of whom were not on the radar in 2010, not even as concepts.
I believe it is more important to focus on the functions than the form. The smart phones have become an important part of our lives because they allow us to meet our communication and information needs better than any other technology. Smart phones do not perform functions that are exclusive to it. For example, there are other technologies such as notebook computers that do almost all of the functions smart phones do. However, they are not as portable as smart phones. Smart phones have continued to decline in weight though they might have become bigger due to bigger screen requirements from the customers. While smart phones can still be made lighter and thinner, I feel smart phones have few good years left. I expect the future technologies to be essentially part of us. They will be so light we will not even feel they are there though we may be aware of their presence. I will not be surprised if some of those technologies are embedded under our skin.
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I believe the ability to store data in the cloud will enable us to create ultra portable technologies that might be as thin as a piece of paper because we won’t have to worry about storage compartments in such devices. It is also possible that such devices may simply act as our ID chips that will interact with almost everything around us including our homes, our bathroom mirrors, our computers, and even the infodisplays in commercial and public areas. In other words, I see almost everything being capable of performing tasks that are now performed by our smart phones. We may be living in a technological utopia where we will be connected to everything around us, and we will be able to use anything around us for a number of purposes such as communication and accessing information. The video does a good job of this as we see in the video that even the bathroom mirror has computing technologies embedded in it. In a world where computing technologies will be embedded in almost everything, smart phones will become quite irrelevant.
I also feel that the video failed to predict the growth of voice technologies. I think we will do away with the need to type because artificial intelligence will be perfectly capable of understanding and following every possible accent and language in the world. Instead of creating a wallpaper to celebrate Sweden’s World Cup win by typing, the individual could have dictated the words to Alexa and then instruct Alexa to send it to a friend.
I also expect holographic technologies to drive smart phones to extinction. Holographic technologies will show us videos, images, and information in 3D format. The shape such holographic technologies may take is hard to predict but we have at least a rough idea, thanks to revolutionary technologies such as Google Glass even if they failed to take off. Maybe Google Glass came too soon and the market was not ready yet.
I could not help but note that the video imagines the smart phone in the future to retain the same shape we had become used to in 2010 and that is still the benchmark at the moment. It is possible that smart phones may continue to be part of our lives for the foreseeable future. However, it is reasonable to assume they may have a form quite different from the one we have now. We can look the trend over the last half century to make the argument why the future form of smart phone will be quite different if smart phones do survive. For example, the landline phones looked quite different from the first mobile phones from Motorola. The smart phones we have no could not look more different than the earliest mobile phones. The pace of technological progress continues to accelerate so in the rare scenario in which smart phones are still the dominant technology in the future, their form will be totally different. It is alo possible the smart phones of the future will perform lot more functions than they do now if the past is any indicator. Landline phones could make calls only. Early mobile phones eventually acquired the ability to send SMS messages. Current smart phones are portable computers. So the future smart phones may have features we have not even imagined yet.
- TATMobileUI. (2010, September 1). Future of Screen Technology. Retrieved June 10, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7_mOdi3O5E&feature=player_embedded
