great visual data

http://smas.studioludens.com/

the internet is 5,000 days old

What do the next 5,000 days hold? - this is a great video

Kevin Kelly talks about the internet in terms of us building a machine.

and its quite a machine - currently estimated to be about the same in performance as one human brain. It doubles in power every two years so in 30 years it will the same power as the all the human brains on the planet.

He talks about the internet become embodied (in the tools and devices we use) about it becoming re-engineered and also about us becoming dependant on it.

SPIMEs

Paraphrasing an interesting article in Campaign by Faris Yakob at Naked NY. Interesting futurology stuff:

A SPIME is a term coined by Sci-Fi author Bruce Sterling to describe a device that knows where it is in space and time. The iPhone is a Spime.

It is exciting for a number of reasons, first and most mundanely it allows location based marketing - offers based on where and when you are and where you point your phone...

More importantly it helps us know where the 'human swarm' is at all times, and increasingly what they are doing.

Combine a SPIME an RFID tag and what you essentially get is a mouse that can click on physical stuff. We will have an internet of 'physical things'. all the intelligence on the web searchable by pointing at physical stuff.

http://www.geovector.com/

Because mobile phones are always on, the old offline / online divide - makes no more sense.

Now imagine all that and take away the phone, the display appears in glasses and you control the data stream by gesticulation. Sounds Great!

Kids and the Kredit Krunch

Interesting article from msnbc.

The largest consumer marketing growth sector in recent years has been kids and youth. Easy credit and cheap manufacturing has meant that they have been bought all the products we were never able to own. They rarely hear 'no, we can't afford that.' Likewise parents have been able to assuage their guilt at working so much by buying kids everything they were never able to own themselves, leading to a best friend, rather than authoritarian style of parenting.

This extends all the way up to teens and beyond as young adults defer adult responsibilities, remain in the family home and spend their disposable income on fun stuff rather than bills.

The credit crunch looks set to change all that and could even have a wider impact on parent child relations.

New normal

original link here

SOCIAL NETWORKING
They're easy to use, they're lightweight online destinations for users to create and share real or virtual world identities. They're the telephone of the 21st C. "Get off your facebook page and do your homework". They're THAT important.

VIRTUAL WORLDS
There is a sense of when entering, of "now what do I do?". They're the mall of the 21st C. A place to go and hang out.

GAMESPACE
Games a themed, directed entertainment experience. the, er, games of the 21st century.

(and the MMO becomes a unique meet spot and launching pad to take the best of these worlds together)