Who is? Go http://www.vervemusicgroup.com/elviscostello/bio/

The idea is, multiple cameras (in or on your TV) track your face and, even as you move around and eat popcorn, present a 3D image – unique to you! There are limitations, due to a restriction on the number of cameras, only four people can watch any given TV at the same time.  Okay, this might restrict how many kids you have or who you invite to movie night but at least you can watch the movie in all three known dimensions without Elvis Costello glasses! The question is now, who is watching you – in the privacy of your home?

From the same article it seems the future in touch screen technology is no longer in touch.  Hmmm. Apparently, cameras can now track all your movements and actions allowing you to stand up to 2 meters from the screen and still interact with the application.  This has plenty of positive implications, including extending office and shop hours by allowing customers to browse, select and buy products and services, all while standing outside the window of a locked shop.  Back home again, imagine flipping through TV and web channels without getting off your couch or wrestling the remote away from your rotweiller.  Given some thought, the opportunities begin to unfold.

However, what about the down side?  How about who’s watching you?  That wonderful thing we call the internet has allowed us to connect almost any device, from your phone to your fridge to your TV.  Enter my friends, not the one’s who cracked the nod for movie night but rather the bunch of theorists speculating who’s on the other side of all those cameras pointing at my ugly face so I can see Southpark 3D!  Are we finally adding to Orwell’s Big Brother or Ben Elton’s Blind Faith, or were they true visionaries? I’m not sure but I think I will cling to my ‘old’ 42 inch HD LCD television for a while longer, thanks.  Rather the nerd glasses for me, methinks.  At least I can go as Elvis Costello to my next fancy dress party!

Okay, so we exaggerate. But Google CEO (and we all know Google is still the guru of everything) Eric Schmidt does believe that five years from now the Internet will be dominated by Chinese language content. What’s more, he made this revelation at recent techie heaven expo – Gartner Symposium/ITxpo Orlando 2009 – in front of thousands of IT gurus, so it must be true!

The good news for those of us who don’t speak Chinese is that other radical changes will occur in the next five years which will actually benefit us. We won’t send you to watch the full 45-minute interview available on YouTube – it’s a super-snooze fest and besides, the kind, now-snoozing-no-doubt ReadWriteWeb (www.readwriteweb.com) folk already did that for us. But we did think these points he made were interesting (highlighted by aforementioned now-snoozing ReadWriteWeb folk):

1. The Internet will also be dominated by social media content. (We could have told him that!)
2. It will be delivered over super-fast bandwidth in real time. (Super-fast? Well, us South Africans can live in hope.) We’re talking broadband well above 100MB in performance.
3. Content will move towards more video. We love us some YouTube.
4. Real time information will be recognised as being just as valuable as all other information, and will be included in search results.
5. Google specifically will also be looking at how to rank real time info. “The fundamental shift towards user-generated information means that people will listen more to other people than to traditional sources. Learning how to rank that is the great challenge of the age.”

That, and learning how to speak Chinese so we can follow it all.

Over the coming years, Nokia’s research will focus on eight areas identified in Agenda 2015. Together, they explore the experiences people will have seven years out, the technology and interfaces they will use, and the infrastructure required to make it happen. computing, and device integration.

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“We have to get better in believing in the impossible.”

Nokia has developed Agenda 2015 (pdf) as a vision of how the physical world will fuse with the digital world seven years from now. It’s a look at how people will be connecting not only with one another, but also with every place and thing in the world, as well as the surprising ways in which they will use these connections to enhance their lives.

Over the coming years, Nokia’s research will focus on eight areas identified in Agenda 2015. Together, they explore the experiences people will have seven years out, the technology and interfaces they will use, and the infrastructure required to make it happen. computing, and device integration.

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