The 5th screen

In this entry I would like to continue the discussion about the latest technical devises, focusing on the progress in the area of the 4 existing screens: cinema, cell phone, PC and TV.

I have already mentioned the incredible things you already can or will be able to do with your mobile phone in the future, like playing virtual games in reality, use it as a personal assistant who knows everything about your preferences and never says against you, or as a mean to meet new friends and find out the information about everything and everyone you see in reality by filming it. And all of this only through your phone!

What about Internet? According to Sven Tollmien and the examples he brought up at his lesson, you will soon be able to do things like picture- or question based search (for example pasting in a picture in order to find a match or typing in a question instead of key words as today), or attend a guided virtual tour for example through Berlin directly through your computer. Through the Internet you will also be able to put together your outfit based on style, form and color.

Interactive TV is also becoming more and more popular these days. Already today we see some forms of interactive TV, when you can skip the commercials, flush forwards or watch many programs in one screen. And this area will grow and develop much more in the future. One example could be that if you watch a certain film in the future and really like the clothes that one of the actors is wearing in the movie, the interactive TV can with help of picture based search give you the suggestions on where to buy this or similar kind of clothes.

These are just some of the future products according to Sven presented during the lecture. Well, quite impressive, isn’t it? The technology does really not stop surprising us! But have we thought how this upcoming technology might affect us in the future? My personal question is about what will happen to our private relationships? I mean who needs parents and teachers if you can easily access all information by typing in the necessary questions in your computer or by wearing a contact lens that can identify and give you information about all objects you see around you? Who needs friends if you can let website choose your outfit for the night out, play amusing and interactive games on you cell phone or have a label on a beer bottle to tell you that you are too drunk to drive home on your own? And who needs relationships if the mystery will be taken away by the technical devises and websites like aka-aki, that can reveal any personal information about the other person just from a picture (that you for instance can take with your mobile phone)or measure his/her feelings and grade of happiness at any point?

It was also mentioned during the lesson that the new generation has already started to think about the 5th screen; where it should be placed, how it should look and function and how can the problem be solved technically.

But how about this? How about your own eyes as the 5th screen? Old-fashioned? Indeed! But at least it might bring you back to the time when personal face-to-face relationships were still important, both you’re your parents, your friends and your partner.

Protection Cup for the Future?

The latest lecture with Sven Tollmien showed it once again – the future is in your mobile. Already today you can do plenty of other activities than just communication using your phone such as planning, playing games, listening to music, taking pictures etc. The geographical markets are increasing as well, people in developing countries have mobile phones in much larger extension today than ever, even though they might not use it for communication as much as we do because of the costs. The age groups using the cell phones on a daily basis are increasing as well. I remember that I got my first mobile phone by the age of 14, today I see children at age 7-9 playing with their phones as they were born with it! And of course I shouldn’t forget the companies who these days do a lot of research in the subject of how to use the mobile phones as a devise to steer and control their products or services.

During his lecture Sven showed the several things that you already can do or might be able to do with help of your mobile in the future. You can for example see information about people you meet in real life in you phone if you have aka-aki network, play virtual games in real life – for example running after a football only visible on the screen of your phone, or use your phone as a personal assistant who can for example suggest a restaurant in your taste, based on your previous choices and your current location.

Don’t get me wrong, these programs seem amazing, but I just can’t avoid asking myself one question. What happened to the old hackneyed discussion about the dangerous electromagnetic radiation? Does anyone think about it these days? Something that around the millennium was a common subject, today it seems to be very normal and accepted. The discussion about the danger of the electromagnetic radiation started first with a huge fuss about the danger of the micro, then everyone moved on to the cell phones, then the discussion emphasized the danger of using the hands free and latest to our laptops. But now no one thinks about it anymore; practically everyone has a micro in their home, parents buy cell phones for their children, I see plenty of men surfing on their laptops while holding them in their laps, or pregnant women using their hands frees in direct contact with their stomachs. No one seems to care about the dangerous radiation anymore?

But why? Honestly, I don’t know… I have tried to search for some forums where people have talked about this kind of things, but firstly all of the discussions regarding cell phones are dated a few years back and the other common denominator is that people do not exactly know whether they should fear this kind of radiation or not. Many of them mean also that there is so much radiation around us anyway so that a cell phone of your own doesn’t really make a difference. And for some reason the discussion has become old; like it seems to be with many of the health topics. Take for example the one that said that chips and grilled food could give you cancer, or the dangers with Atkins Nutritional Approach, or high cholesterol level in fat food, or the extreme danger of the UV light giving you skin cancer and so on.. They all start with people avoiding the dangerous products, but then everything goes back to normal. The same thing happened with the electromagnetic radiation. Not that the scientists have stated that the new wireless devises are not dangerous, but people just got tired of discussing the dangers and started to use their beloved devises and appreciating the benefits of them. And by introducing their children to it at the early age, they do not really break this wireless-devise-friendly pattern. Even the companies push people indirectly into this pattern by making the cell phones a part of their products.

Taking all this into consideration I guess the question in future will not be whether it’s dangerous or not to use a mobile phone, but rather how come we even considered the living without it? So maybe a protection cup wouldn't be such a bad idea at all in the future...

Wall-E future around the corner?

Älvsjömässan – according to the advert: “Trends and Inspiration for everyone!” Well, can you think of any better entertainment on a Saturday for a newly fledged trendspotter, with almost a full-time job of renovating my new apartment from top till toe? Of course I ended up there!

Both A and B halls full of visitors, around 480 exhibitors and rarely enough oxygen for everyone. But, believe it or not, I did manage to pass all (!) booths without fainting. Afterwards though I have to admit I was a bit disappointed. After some of the Trendspotting lectures, like for example the latest one with Sven Tollmien or the one with Piers Fawkes, I seem to be hard to impress when it comes to gadgets. I’ve seen so many unbelievably clever examples presented in class, looking like something taking from a science fiction movie, so that a Handpresso does not really amaze me that much anymore.

However, among all these different products and offers, one could at least see two clear trends filling the atmosphere: the environmental awareness and the strive for automatization.

The first one is rising today more than ever. People were really buying the new environmental friendly tools and products, everything from light bulbs and paint to sofas and fridges. The only small problem is that for every new fridge that buys to a home, there is an old one that has to go to recycling, and what people do not think about is the cost of the recycling process. Of course when it comes to the very old fridges that contain Freon, the best way is to recycle them as soon as possible. But if you have a fridge on a fairly new model, you might by recycling generate more costs than good.

But except for this rising environmental awareness, all products of today undeniably have to be self-cleaning, self-defrosting, prefabricated, preprogrammed or ready to use, no manual work needed. This unbelievable strive for the automatization seems to be what people want these days. I am not saying that I belong to the crowd of reactionaries opposing all progress in the world, I as well prefer things to happen fast and in an easy way with as little physical activity involved as possible. This seems to be the most desirable wish of the new generation. But are we aware of the consequences of this? Do we know where this simple wish will lead us? Is now the time to say “Be careful what you wish for”?

The humans in wall-e got their wish through, the existence became as simple as they hoped for, full of robots to do any kind of effort or other unwelcome jobs like cleaning, shopping, transportation, even refilling the drinks. But what happened to them and their bodies? The lack of physical activities transferred their bodies to seal- or whale-alike forms, with no possibility to move without help of their transportation seats. Of course this future scenario is made in a funny and childish way in the movie, easy to laugh at and joke about, but how far from this future scenario are we now? What if we actually would end up looking like the people in wall-e as a consequence to our wish of speed and simplicity in the world? Would we still want things to happen fast and easy? I don’t know about you, but considering this I’d much rather wipe my floor once a week myself, than buy a self-moving vacuum cleaner, in order to get some every-day exercising, even though I couldn’t name the more boring house duty..

New way of branding?

I don’t like to brag about my achievements, and especially not in this way (on a public blog available for everyone), but I just can’t elude to tell you about my Friday lunch experience.

Almost one year ago I participated in a contest called Investor Team Challenge arranged (of course) by Investor themselves. The contest is a strategy game that initially was produced for internal use to give the employees a better understanding in the new strategy that was undertaken in 2005, but one year later used in order to promote Investor and its new strategy externally. The challenge was announced among universities all over Sweden, and students with medical, economical, law or technical background from different parts of the country came to compete for the first time in spring 2006. My team was one of the 15 teams competing and by the end of the tournament day we happened to win the contest.

During the evening dinner the price was announced and it turned out to be a lunch with the Management Group of Investor. Unfortunately I couldn’t attend the lunch arranged for my group last year, therefore I was invited to join this year’s winner group instead.

So this Friday I came to Investors Office to receive my award! The environment was as I remembered it from the competition day; huge impressive bright rooms with old-fashioned antique furniture. Together with the other three students I entered the dinner room and shortly after the Management Group made their entry.

The lunch passed as I was imagining it before: a little stiff conversation led by the management, some embarrassing silence and of course the obvious bragging coming from the students attended in order to secure the future employment. But, something was said during that lunch, something that actually got me thinking, something that is the reason to why I am writing today… This “something” was said by Börje Ekholm as an answer to a question about what Investor gains from arranging this kind of challenges. (Unfortunately the quote will be slightly modified, since I didn’t take any notes during the lunch, but I assure you that the content is perfectly correct)

"First of all it’s a great way to brand Investor externally. The students attending the challenge get a chance to try how it is to be a part of the Management Group of Investor for one day and learn a lot about our strategy and other important everyday issues. At the same time we get to learn a great deal about the students and therefore our new generation. Not only about their behavior and habits as a consumer, but also as the future employee. No matter what branch or company they start working for after school, we will still be able to maintain a good relationship”.

In other words Investor tries to brand their name among high educated students so that they get a positive connection to the name and company as a whole. Most likely this positive association will, in a couple of years, be brought into relatively high positions (thanks to the high education) in all different types of industries, which in the long term will benefit Investor and its business. Simply Investor creates their “own” people to be spread out among all industries and therefore ease the investing process.

I was amazed by the answer, since I have never heard about such a thorough way of branding before. But I can’t deny the fact that it seems to be a clever and effective form of branding. “You can't teach an old dog new tricks”, but you can certainly indoctrinate the young peoples’ brains with a message that will stay there forever. Right or wrong? Well, it’s up to you to decide, my question is: Is this the new way of branding?

Designing a system

Interesting Lecture by Roland Jones about design here the other day, especially for an incorrigible economist who knows basically nothing about it. Not “nothing at all” of course, after all I am a consumer and therefore appear on the receiving end of design. But what I mean by “knowing nothing” is rather that I know nothing about the underlying factors of it. Here is one clear example:

I remembered that Roland brought up a story about a project he was working on once. The government was rebuilding a park (I apologize for not remembering where) in order to get rid of the drunks and addicts. The park had for example to become more open and light, but they also had to thing about the outside furniture. Therefore Roland got the tasks to design the benches for this new established park. It sounds fairly easy, doesn’t it? The only catch was that the benches should be designed in a way so that it would be impossible to sleep on, either through placing two hand rests in the middle or just by making the benches incredibly uncomfortable to sleep on.

This was something I haven’t thought of before. I’ve been backpacking, sleeping on the airports and train stations many times before, cursing the uncomfortable chairs in the waiting rooms and hoping that one day the design of this chairs might improve so that people actually can sleep on them while waiting for their connection. What I did not think about was the fact that this uncomfortable chair was designed this way on purpose, similar to the benches in this mentioned park, designed in order to decrease the number of people spending the night there.

Neither did I think of the design in general as something that powerful until Roland mentioned it in his lecture. He was talking about design as “problem solving” and “Designing a system rather that designing a product” were his exact words.

This also made me to remember one of the lectures I had at SSE during my first year, “Firms and Markets”. The teacher was comparing McDonalds strategy to a simple production line, mentioning the fact that even the chairs at McDonalds were designed uncomfortable on purpose, to make people want to finish their meal as soon as possible, in order to free the space for new customers. Talking about “designing a system!”

And there are obviously plenty of examples like that where designers by their products indirectly make people to act in a certain way. The thing is that one has to “be awake” in order to be able to see these hidden meanings in the products. Usually it’s the simple “sell as many as possible”-design but sometimes it’s deeper than that. And now and then it gets really tricky. Here is a list of product that, at least I, had problems to see any meaning with the following products. Why would anyone want to buy a glass table on bicycle wheels, or a chair with pieces of wood sticking out of it, or a chair that looks like barrow, or a mirror where you can’t see your own reflection, or a clock where you can’t see the time, or a shelf where you can’t put anything, or a high tea cup, well I guess you get the point…

How can you talk about the hidden meaning here, when most of the products do not even fill their purpose?! My point is that some design might be very powerful, but some of the examples we see just seem to be striving after being as odd as possible, which occasionally eliminates the whole purpose of the product. And in that case I don’t see why people should buy these products at all, unless they actually want to have something that fills the purpose of “not filling any purpose”.

More free time in future?

“Technological evolution can not be stopped” said Nicklas Bergman in a lecture when he presented his future theory. He also explained that before you can call a single independent invention a technological evolution you need to wait and see whether it gets established on the market to a certain point where it starts to affect peoples’ lives. His example was private cars. Before they existed, people were less movable and therefore had a stationary lifestyle. Once the private cars become affordable, it led to an increase of the sales of country houses, since people now could easily transport between the cities and the suburbs.

In other words Nicklas meant that every innovation can be a single independent invention, but doesn’t necessary have to become a technological evolution.

A few weeks later I was watching “Beyond Tomorrow” on Discovery Science Channel, where they as usually presented the latest inventions from all around the world, and I started to think of what these new cool gadgets could lead to if they gradually turned into technological evolutions. All inventions presented were from different areas and therefore had various features & benefits. Although after seeing all five of them I started to see a pattern. No matter what field of application they would have, all of them had one purpose – to achieve the result quicker.

Here comes the list of them:

1. Chemical spray from US that helps you to remove the scratches on your car. You don’t have to polish you vehicle or do anything else with it, just spray on the scratches and wait, the result will show in 15-20 minutes. --> Less time-consuming
2. New video camera that helps the scientist to do their research on dingos in South Australia. The heat- and movement sensor build in the camera only reacts and starts filming when it catches a warm-blooded animal that moves and has the size that has been preselected (to film only animals of dingo-size) cuts down the time of the night film from 12 hours to just a few. --> Less time-consuming
3. Mystical berries from Japan that can make it easier for you to drop a couple of kilos if you need it. The berries are served only in one restaurant in Tokyo together with very healthy food, which does not contain a milligram of sugar. You are supposed to chew on the berries before you start eating the food, which without any sugar tastes bitter and sour. The secret is that the berries can affect your taste buds for the next hour and therefore turn any bitter or sour taste into a sweet flavor and make it taste like the best pastry you’ve ever eaten. This can actually make you want to eat healthy food and spend less time at the gym trying to lose your weight. --> Less time-consuming
4. New invention called Quin Spin developed at Loughborough University in England that can make you kick it like Beckham. By measuring the speed, spin and position of the ball that you kick, it can tell you what parts to improve and therefore help you to get the perfect kick faster. --> Less time-consuming
5. Mechanical translator from Kahrlsruhe University in Germany that can help you to communicate on the thirty most common languages spoken all over the world. The translator itself is a communication revolution. It doesn’t only immediately translates and pronouns the exact phrases you say and receive the answers, but also “reads” signs by taking pictures. The creators are also working on the translator so that it can be used on the phone by using the muscle detector, but such a progress will take some more time. As for now, the plan is to release it on the market within a couple of years, which means that you can forget all that time it takes you to learn a new language if you can afford one of these new translators. --> Less time-consuming

According to these inventions the technology development today goes in a clear direction to reach the results quicker and therefore ease the existence of humans in the future by give them more free time. The question now is though whether this kind of inventions will only remain the inventions or whether they actually will become a common part of our lives and gradually turn into the technological evolution? And if they will, will we humans have more spear time in future? And in that case, what will we spend it on? Will we find new interest and hobbies, spend more time with our friends and families or will we just choose to work more? Well, I can’t answer this question for everyone, but at least i know what my choice would be... Do you?

Wedding thoughts

Going to a wedding is usually fun, going to a wedding as a trendspotter is even more fun! This is a true wisdom that I learned during this weekend.

This Saturday one of my close friends said the most important “Yes” in his life so far, hence a big crowd of friends and family gathered for a lively celebration in a ballroom in central Stockholm. The wedding was lovely; luxury residence, delicious dinner, great entertainment, you name it… And on top of all this I got lucky with my table company. (Worth mentioning is that my friend married a girl from India, thus the audience was very mixed in terms of both age and culture, something that I, as a young trendspotter, consider being a perfect environment for trendspotting).

By the end of the evening I ended up talking to a guy in his thirties who seemed to have done everything from hiking in Peru to starting up a Swedish Student Association at a University in Australia. He has travelled the world and gave the impression of being driven and ambitious. He told me that at the moment he was running a coffeehouse in Odenplan together with his girlfriend, but that soon he would be getting the license and dilute the current menu with some alcoholic beverages.

But for a young Stockholm-guy this didn’t seem to be enough and soon we started to talk about his collateral project that he was working on together with one of his friends. Sandshoe, which is the name of the company, started its existence in May 2008 and less than one month later the pilot group got the privilege to try it out.

The idea of Sandshoe is simple – surf trips to South America, combined with voluntary work in that area. The company offers a cheap price for your surf holiday, while you in return spend a few hours a day contributing with your knowledge and skills to the local development projects. At the moment the company has specified on surf holidays (everything between 2 and 8 weeks) combined with teaching English, bringing a great value to the ongoing local projects in Las Tunas, Ecuador.

But how did these two guys manage to come up with such an idea? The answer is simple: they spotted two trends and put them together in one business idea. Growing tourism that takes people further away from their homes in order to experience more adventurous challenges and better awareness of the world situation that increases the voluntary work around the globe. These two trends combined together generated a new business idea, which gradually led to Sandshoe, a company that truly brings together business and pleasure by creating a great value within the areas of education and sustainable community development and giving their customers a good deal on the price for surf holidays!

Key take away from this story: A good trendspotting eye can generate a profitable idea and at the same time contribute to the progress in developing countries.