INNOVATION HAS A FUTURE. HUZZAH.

Monday, December 17, 2007

“You will not find me alive at sunrise”, was probably the most accurate prediction by Nostradamus. True to his word, he was found dead the next morning. This effectively relieved him of having to answer for, or even explain, his other, more cryptic visions of the future.

This week Business Week released Innovation Predictions 2008. It’s unlikely anyone will ever hold the publication to account on the accuracy of their particular prophecies. Nevertheless, there is money on the line.

In August 2006, Boeing announced it was extinguishing Connexion, its high-speed broadband service. Just over a year later, Forrester is predicting in-flight Wi-Fi will be the next big thing. This, to me, seems less Kreskin than Greenspan. In other words, it’s inevitable.

Apparently, Boeing’s customers balked at the hard costs of retrofitting aircraft, said to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. But businessmen with expense accounts are why airlines exist in the first place. How long will they put up with non-productive in-flight time? Especially when the alternative is yet another viewing of the dreaded Pirates of the Caribbean.

BW also predicts a “Mobile Explosion”. Who doesn’t think Emerging Media is a misnomer? It doesn’t even qualify as foresight. That’s because it has long since emerged in Europe and Japan. Already, my brother-in-law in Tokyo pays for his Pocari Sweat with, and watches network telephone on, his mobile. Try that with an iPhone.

For North American digital media agencies, this is practically a free ride. Sheesh. All we have to do is copy what works. (On my next trip to Japan, think I’ll take my former Dentsu company baseball team to lunch to play some catch-up.)

Where earthquakes and/or crippling landline telephone rates arrested the development of early, personal internet use, the net result was accelerated adoption of newer and less restrictive technology. Let’s see what we can come up with. No reason to think it can’t be mobile.

(I’d like to see technology leapfrog keypads and offer voice-recognition capability to make the mobile experience usefully portable and a lot less like the cumbersome desktop experience.)

However, the most provocative prophecy might be that “identity” will replace “experience” in media and design. “People (will) create their own identities interacting with products and services. The notion of a consumer experience is…so 20^th Century.”

I’m suspicious that people will find it necessary to create identity if they are able to accrue sufficient experiences. For years now, Europeans have begun to measurably shun material symbols of status. Rather, they have invested time and money into genuine life experiences.

The upshot is that when people are busy “just doing”, aren’t goods (and for that matter corporations) rendered insignificant? That result would be consistent with the predicted exodus to personal associations free from corporate intrusion.

For BW also suggests that Facebook and MySpace crowds will turn away from the “commercialization of their personal information and relationships”.

They see a move to exclusivity and privacy that replaces the open community. Sure. Could be. But for me, the issue isn’t so much intrusive corporations.

Frankly, it’s just that I hope merely to see most of my “friends” nailed to a Funwall.