Which products, used by few today, will be essential in five years?

Y! Answers has its problems (about half the questions can be answered better by Google searches, and about half of the questions are retarded), but sometimes, there's an absolutely brilliant question or answer.  This is one of the brilliant questions,  sheerly in terms of how compelling it is.

Which products, used by few today, will be essential in five years?

Think about how much technological innovation has changed our lives in the past 5 years…and what products we use every day now. What's the next big thing that will change the way we live?

There's quite a few ways this can be interpreted, which is great, "since the next big thing that will change the  way we live" and the "products, used by few today, [but] essential in five years" could be completely different (ie,  global warming and alternative energy), or it can be taken purely as speculation on technological trends.  (either way, it's intellectual catnip for armchair futurists).

On the former perspective, I think global climate change and increasing energy prices will be definitely the things that change the way we live in the next few years.  Barring cataclysm though, most alternative energy technologies are actually designed to allow us to sustain our lifestyle with mostly minor or unnoticed changes (E85 at the pump, switching to alternatives to natural gas and oil at the power station).

In a similar way, most biotech (disease cures, etc) are being designed to hold the line on how we live or affect only a minority of the population.  The exception perhaps is the breakthroughs that are currently be made in anti-aging and rejuvination therapies.  It's quite possible that some of the develops being made recently and in the near future wend their way through the FDA in the next 5 years and reshape how we deal with aging.

In terms of pure technology changes, the most interesting thing to do is to probably turn the dial back to 2001 and think about the biggest differences I can think of (admittedly biased toward net/tech):

• No iPod/ITMS
• No Cameraphone
• No Satellite Radio
  
• Blogging not mainstream
  
• Very little social media (Flickr, YouTube)
• No social networking sites
• No Wikipedia
• MMORPGs just taking off
  

What's interesting is that most of these things that are now dominant already had a fair amount of penetration, but just hadn't gone mainstream yet.

So here's my technological hitlist for 2011 (still no black monoliths in sight):

• Software as service is standard - we're starting to see some of this with widgets and with better web apps, but this will go to the next level.  Things like social networking and media sharing services will increasingly be integrated at the OS level and prepackaged with hardware.
  
• Global digital identity / reputation / relationship system - as you're online persona gets tied to your offline persona and your physical presence (digital leakage?), this is a given.  Perhaps the only real question is who will own and run this.
• Digital media - yes to media sharing and filtering, streaming shared and personal digital media from anywhere, and the privilege to buy DRM'd versions of just about anything that you can currently download for free (TV shows, movies, concert CDs).  The future of the iPod is probably seamless wireless syncing and streaming, which leads to...
  
• Smart phones - it looks fairly obvious today that phones will be the primary convergence device in 5 years.  They have networking down with 3G and bluetooth (sure, add in mesh if you want) and already have taken over photo capturing (currently 80%+ of digital cameras), and soon video as well.  In five years, all phones will also serve as physical presence devices as well.  Many of the services from point 1 will run on your phone.
  
• RFID - yes, I think Bruce Sterling will get his spimes and be able to Google his socks in 5 years.  Walmart is already starting to slap them everywhere now that it's almost as cheap as printing, and it won't be long before Apple realizes they can manage your reaLife as well as your iLife.
  
• Self Monitoring - I'll throw in the outside bet that the Nike+ is just the start of a whole wave of self-instrumentation.  I and other geeks have been obsessed with it for a while, but now that normal people are being exposed to it through every aspect of their lives (MMORPGs, Social Networking Software, Infoglut), it's pretty much a done deal.
• Personal Aggregators - mentioned tangentially already, but I think we'll start see a new generation of systems that will try to help you manage all the crap (offline/online/data streams etc) you'll be bombarded with.
• Shared everything - also touched upon, but I think we're moving towards a social-everything model.  At the same time, I think with the development happening, I think we'll see much more fine-grained models that will more accurately reflect how we communicate and share in real life (say hello to private communites.  Hi Vox!)
  

Oh, and some second stringers that I'm not sure about, but sure would be cool:

• e-Paper - actual honest-to-god E-Ink devices are finally starting to come out.  And color/flexible e-paper products are being announced regularly.  With rising paper costs and Newspaper companies openly talking about how e-paper readers would pay for themselves in a one-year subscription...  Well, this would be pretty handy.
• AR HUDs - ok, this I think has pretty much no chance of happening, but wouldn't it be so damn cool? (or not)
• Fabrication - 3D printing/fabrication of all sorts has come a long way towards affordability (you can get a laser etcher for the same price as a laser printer cost a decade or two ago), and it's true that the physical world is like the internet for geeks (hoo-ray physical computing), but the difference really is that while the Internet has a capital cost approaching zero, physical computing is still a far ways off.  But who knows, maybe there'll be some really compelling uses in the next 5 years that really launches things off.
  

I'm sure I'm missing some stuff, but well, it'll be interesting to dig this post out in 5 years and see what hit and what missed (I think the biggest changes will probably be social more than technological, but who knows)

Comments

[Andy Baio]

You forgot holographic nachos.

[Konstantinos]

Excellent, though-compelling post, Leonard.

BTW in point #6 there's a spelling error you may want to fix: "but not that normal people are being exposed to" is probably "but now..."?

[mathowie]

"Things like social networking and media sharing services will increasingly be integrated at the OS level and prepackaged with hardware."

I hope that in five years we won't have locally installed software beyond the OS and a few basic apps. I could imagine Office, Photoshop, and even something like iMovie be run entirely online, through a browser. Aside from the OS and a web browser, I'd love it if my 2011 computer didn't have any other locally-installed software at all.

[sixfoot6]

I think you're dead on, especially re: spimes, personal moritoring, self data aggregate convergence.

Hmm, 2011... Aren't we supposed to have SWARMING KILLER ROBOTS then? I mean, for the good of Democracy.

[Leonard]

The line is increasingly blurring more and more as things as apps become network based and your local copy acts more as a cache and automatically updates/syncs.

In 2011 people will be running something like OSX 10.8-11 or MS Vista/Fiji their desktop. I don't know if we'll be at automagically managed everything by then.

For phones and and 3D chocolate printers though, definitely.

[Leonard]

We don't have to worry about the SWARMING KILLER ROBOTS because they'll only be sold to responsible agencies like the military and police (i saw it on ETECH, it must be true!), not those nasty terrorists commmiting acts of assymetric warfare by hanging themselves in Geneva-convention defying concentration camps.

[jddunn]

What about materials in general, and especially materials and components that are geared towards energy efficiency? I can see things like LEDs/compact fluorescents for lighting being standard in 5 years if energy prices keep rising. Also, carbon fiber and other light/strong engineered stuff should be much more widely used, if they can get it to scale production-wise. I'd say energy costs in general are going to be a huge driver of tech adoption in the next 10 years or so. About time.

[Leonard]

Yeah, I can see LEDs and CFLs beingmore popular, but they are pretty much everywhere already.

I think the big question is will there be relapse 10 years later where everyone starts driving SUVs again (somehow, I doubt that, but who would have thought that would have happened after the 70s oil crunch?).

[Leonard]

Oh yeah, on the materials science front, I have to say, carbon nanotech gets me really excited: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/08/carbon_nanoribb.php

[ian]

"Global digital identity / reputation / relationship system - as you're
online persona gets tied to your offline persona and your physical
presence (digital leakage?), this is a given.  Perhaps the only real
question is who will own and run this."

I see digital identity moving down the stack and standardizing itself around several major attributes that are measured by transactions which are generic as the ip packets & mail headers are today. The market won't allow a single entitiy to control or define an important aspect of ourselves as our identity or reputation. Instead there will be a rough and messy collection of services such as an eBay or Alexa ranking that will all feed into publically available webservices and a layer of services that will compete to aggregate your reputation and identity.

The things that are important to a Facebook crowd are going to be different from an eBay crowd so it will ultimately be up to the person looking you up to decide how they want to size you up.

[Pbrooks100]

Nice job! Care to tell me the lottery numbers for June 2016?