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Graduating from Kindergarten

By Michael Hulme, Director of the International Centre for the study of Media, Technology and Culture (ICMTC).

The following is the first in a series of short ‘thought’ papers thinking about our future interaction with devices of communication and media delivery. The comments are based on research, observations of current behaviours, social and behavioural theory, technological possibilities and future projections. They represent a personal, informed “guess”, designed to stimulate thought and to question current strategies and implementations.

Building interconnections
We are today like very young children in a kindergarten, picking up play bricks, examining them, playing with them, dropping them, only to pick up another. Ours is a world in which we focus purely on the individual under consideration, be that a person or an inanimate object. But the future, as we leave our kindergarten, will see us attempting to understand how things relate to one another and build new interconnected structures and networks.

In this way our relationship with devices of communication and media delivery will become both more complex, as devices become interlinked into the very fabric of our lives, and yet more simple as they become easier to use, less overtly present or disruptive. Today’s distinction between ‘virtual’ or ‘cyber’ worlds and the physical world will exist no longer. Just like knowledge and language, ‘things’ that we cannot necessarily touch, see or smell, are inherent in our living and inhabiting the material world of tangible things, so future generations will similarly regard the internet and other forms of media networks, information and communication. Within the physical world they will be reinstated as just differing facets of one reality.

Fluid lifestyles
Our lives will become increasingly mobile - perhaps a better word would be fluid - characterised by great physical mobility. This will be matched by our ability to sustain and develop networks through communication and access to information. Mobility will therefore be reinforced through our increasing use of wireless connection, and the time or space between events, times when we are physically or mentally ‘in transit’ will become increasing important. We have already witnessed the early population of this space via SMS.

In conjunction with mobility will be a corresponding increase in the ‘fracturing’ and localising of linear time. Most events will be to some extent locally ‘composed’ by individuals or groups/networks of related individuals, for example a group sharing (either in physical or communication proximity) a broadcast experience at a time to suit themselves. The corollary to this will be a return to even greater significance of a few time dependent, extended local, national or global events, creating moments of shared broader social cohesion.

Creating virtual selves
Authoring and managing will become increasingly dominant themes. Already we have the tools to ‘control’ the way we are perceived and interact with others. SMS and MMS are good examples, enhancements to existing and new technologies. We will all to some extent become ‘authors’ of the self, creating and controlling our own image rights, and appearances in divergent networks or groups. This will become increasingly important as peer-to-peer content and experience creation takes over from mass broadcast media. Indeed, in many cases mass broadcast media will be providing basic content to be edited, re-authored and shared by localised (localised means more than physically local, the experience could be ‘local’ to a physically dispersed group) networks or groups.

The interaction of authoring requires a highly involved relationship to communications and information, a level of involvement we will not wish to sustain at all times. During more passive times ‘ambient’ presence will become important. Indeed many of today’s media delivery devices will become increasingly ambient, physically blending into the environment whilst providing background content but with the potential for this to be actively modified and foregrounded as individuals or groups require.

There will be increased emphasis on actively managing relationships, information and media. This management will extend from authoring outbound content and communication to managing incoming traffic. We already face too many choices and options. However whilst choice options will continue to proliferate, these will be accompanied by a growth in ordering and managing agents capable of exercising choice and sustaining the infrastructure (both physical and informational) of our personal networks on our behalf.

Our personal interventions will increasingly ask less of us at a low grade operational level, we will in fact act as genuine managers rather than as we do today as mechanics. Currently many of our devices are relatively ‘dumb’ or at least are locked into structures designed when devices were dumb. As device intelligence increases and older design structures break down, devices will increasingly manage themselves to optimise performance within a ‘constellation’ of other devices. In so doing they will allow us to move from context to context (location to location) whilst retain a high degree of connectedness, and we will be able to occupy several ‘spaces’ simultaneously yet retain a high degree of control.

Non-integrated technology
The foregoing comments must seem very optimistic. Today we have mobile devices with more functions than most can use, interactive television has so far failed to really excite (beyond voting), and few of us can operate our video recorder, let alone our PC. Our technologies have been developed independently so they cannot intercommunicate, but increasingly they borrow elements of functionality from each others to become ever more complex, leaving the user to actively manage low level mechanical choices.

As we move from our kindergarten, we will set aside our individual bricks and realise that their true value lies in the complex structures we can build with them. We will discover that there is no single killer application, that there is no ‘virtual world.’ These were all useful shorthand, fictions that assisted our early understanding. The world beyond the kindergarten is a complex series of relationships, where things exist in relation to one another. But we must never underestimate the achievement of developing and learning to live with these bricks. How they might fit together is the next step.

The International Centre for the study of Media, Technology and Culture (ICMTC) studies how media, technology and culture act in combination to become the means by which we understand, create and sustain relationships in our personal and organisational lives. For more information, click here.

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