Techno-culture Game Changers in 2010
Posted on December 14, 2009
Remember 2009? That was the year that brought us balloon boy jokes. What will the next year bring? Here are five projections for techno-culture game changers in 2010. What do you think? Make your own projections in the comments.
1. Augmented Reality
You want to eat a hot dog. You type “hot dog” into your smart phone, hold it up, and the screen reveals a real world camera image enhanced with superimposed geo-tagging that not only tells you where to get a hot dog but allows you to rate the hot dog in terms of quality and price. The marriage of the real world and computer data is making people froth at the mouth. And this week Japanese startup Tonchidot announced $4 million in investment for its mobile/social geo-tagging application that boasted 100,000 users in its first four days. Augmented reality is becoming a reality.
2. Project Natal
Controller-free gaming. Let me say that again. Controller-free gaming. What’s possibly next? Remember when Marty McFly showed future kids how to play the shoot ‘em up game? “You mean you have to use your hands? That’s like a baby’s toy!” Rumors point to a November launch, so it’ll be a late year game changer. Nevertheless: Don’t worry future kids, we’re catching up.
3. Rupert Murdoch
The media mogul (with a net worth of $4 billion) wants to take something that is free and charge for it. Specifically he wants to take his news (see: Wall Street Journal) out of the hands of search engines (see: Google) and make others (see: Bing) pay for it. It will be interesting to see him try. Bye bye, Wall Street Journal?
4. Cloud Computing
You are in Best Buy. You ask an employee: “Hey, how much hard drive space does this have?” She answers: “There’s no hard drive space. Everything is saved on the web.” Well, there you have it. Call me crazy? I refer you to the Google Chrome OS. If you’ve been using Google Documents for the past few years, then a transition to complete cloud computing could be refreshing. And the potential for cloud computing in the education field is immense. Just think: students never lose their homework!
5. Apple’s iPad/Tablet/Thingy
It doesn’t matter what it turns out to be. It will be a game changer if it provides the best of the iPhone with everything a Kindle and Nook can do. Bye bye, books? Not yet, but the brand recognition alone will drive this kind of device into the mainstream.
(Hot dog photo by Richard Holden – Remixed – CC BY 2.0)
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4 Responses to “Techno-culture Game Changers in 2010”
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I don’t like #4.
What if the internet is down? What if Google (or whoever) has a system crash? What if someone wants to snoop files? What if the cloud hosting company decides to outsource it’s data center to a foreign country, and later that country is no longer a “friend” of the US? Or how do you know that outsourced center is actually secure from hackers?
People need to understand that if their data is not residing locally, they don’t have 100% control over it. Especially for businesses (trade secrets).
Big agreement on #1 – but the lifespan of holding a cell phone at arms length to see the AR overlay will be, I hope, short.
Something I’ve been thinking on – we’ve had (are having) a hard time inventing cell phone etiquette. What’s going to happen when my experience of the world (the JP overlay) doesn’t look anything like yours (the JH overlay)? At least both will show local hot dog resources *grin*.
I think spyboy’s points on #4 are valid and well articulated. And, while I’m not personally interested in augmented reality at all, I am interested to see what happens with all of these things.
Ummmmmmm.
Might be a good time to buy shares of Apple.
Look what it did for Forest!