In 2002 I worked on a project for microsoft that was basically a followup/exit interview study on how college kids were using technology. At the time microsoft did what I thought was ingenious really. Give 12 kids 10,000 in technology, sit back, and follow up with them 9 months later to see what distilled out of that mass influx of technology.
Basically what sticked? What didn't? We shadowed these kids for two days, following them to school, hangouts and met their friends. We were there to see just what really stuck?
Today looking back on that study I see each kid as a theme in todays technological infused scene.
We had the early adopter hacker kid, he hacked everything, he bought bleeding edge tech to make his life better and more interesting. This kid made his own dance dance revolution stage, wired it up via linux to his PC, and wrote his own dance dance revolution app via the open source movement. He tinkered with waaay early tablet tech, played around with extending his brand new at the time, xbox. He had visions of netvibes and igoogle long before those sites ever arrived on the scene, and he gave us the beautiful bite of "alway's on..." which later became a major theme in our report. This was late 01 early 2002. He envisioned world where everything was on.. as it should be. He had a kind of "no excuses" look on his face when he said that line I recall.
A few kids in our study were showing signs of net over exposure. They were becoming angry with where the web, and the general slant of technology was going. They talked about having to spend more and more time keeping track of their multiple identities online. This was before social networks really hit the scene to the extent you see them today. One kid talked about hating email, it bogged him down, made him slow. Another insisted that digital books were the future, having never purchased in favor of using them online or electronic instead.
Some kids wanted to blow the whole 10k on a massive plasma screen which at the time, 10k for 40" screen was about right. Microsoft didn't let them do that of course.
One kid was the tivo, joost, apple tv kid of that generation. He watched only shows via the web. He was also the mass torrent expert and he loved mobile tech.
We had a girl who went into detail about how IM changed the way she talked or expressed her self noting that just the idea of having a backspace or delete allowed her to edit herself more than in real face to face communication she couldnt do that as much, and she leaned more toward communicating via SMS or IM as a result of that at times. She also talked about IM as a way to monitor friends, it was an awareness alert tool for her, she could see that Fred was online, home, and odds are NOT going out tonight... HA! She'd think to herself.
I'm always facisinated with unintended uses people dream up for technology. Just when you think you made it to do X, someone says.. HA.. I use it for Y!
Lastly we had the startup kid that is just about everywhere today if you live on the west coast. This kid was all about extending every loophole, exploit possible in the eBay system. He paid his friends to do stuff online to max his profits, increase demand for his goods, services, and network the crap outa himself. He was also the wifi dude, providing wifi to himself, and nearly everyone in his building and if he could maybe the block.
Fun project. Step foward 5-6 years, we should do it again. What's the next wave all about?
I've been thinking about this lately as I've been producing mind maps of my own internal ideas- just like, wtf do you want to do dan, sort of thing. To me the future will be always on.. that holds true.. but what else is coming?
1. Location Based Awarness, huge, and still coming, and tons of different aspects to tagged spaces, new enabling tools, networks, brand opportunities and more.
2. Context Aware Technology / Spimes, infused bits o tech in your butter... , as your browser senses content and targets you with ads via the google machine, soon everyday objects will sense you, know you, and extend the digital hand of.. something
3. Hackability as a state of mind
4. Spam, Phishing, Backlash, Paranoia trades out over Trust, this will be a big problem. As identities continue to get more and more complex, the weight of the digital experience will drain the life outa us erroding confidence in anything other than a face to face discussion. Phishing in particular is taking down the online marketing trust engine that people attempt to craft to enhance their business, and of course save money for them.
5... what else.. More minds on fire. I see developmental fire everywhere. Thats a good thing and its bleeding over into phsyical devices, its part of the hackable seed thats lose, but in general there is crap load of development happening, that in turn is creating more and more promise for all of us.
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