Media Experiences of the Near Future, featuring Expert Opinion From Intel's In-house Futurist, Brian David Johnson

Today’s digital landscape is a whirlwind of instantaneous change and metamorphosis. It seems as though we are on the precipice of truly releasing the old ways in which consumers are delivered content, to the dismay of many, as they struggle clinging to the old models of marketing, advertising, and revenue generation. While there are many who struggle to come to terms with the fact that the Internet has changed and will continue to change they way business is run, there are many forward thinking people and companies that are laying the groundwork for their organizations to become the leaders of tomorrow.

To glimpse what we’re in for, I turned to the Internet to gather some information from a gentleman that could be considered an expert on the future (if that’s possible, he’s one of the guys), Brian David Johnson. Brian is a Principal Engineer at Intel Corp. and Director of Future Casting for the leading chip making company in the world. He runs “The Tomorrow Project” sponsored by Intel, a website that features various writing competitions where people from around the world submit essays that investigate their visions for the future regarding technology that’s coming viewed through a filter of what they would most like to see happen.

In an interview with Allvoices at ad:tech, the largest and longest-running digital marketing and technology event, Brian talks about the five to ten year lead time it takes for Intel to develop their industry leading chips (more on that in a second). His message on the ad:tech stage was about how marketers need to convey messages with meaning to the consumers they are trying to reach by focusing on the experience that they intend the consumer to have with the brand. Brian goes on to say that marketers in general need to embrace their skill at crafting experiences for the consumer, that’s what a marketer really does at the root anyway.

 It is Brian's expert opinion that within the chip design and implementation lead time required for commercial manufacturing (5-10 years), nearly everything will be a computer; the Internet of Things will be so all encompassing that basically all of our "things", will, in essence, have a “brain” and communicate.  Brian David Johnson, in a feature from iMedia Connection, talks about these same likely potentials. In the series of Vimeo videos located within the link above (which I HIGHLY recommend for any budding media aficionado), Brian mentions just how ubiquitous screens will be, which is FAR more pervasive than they are today, and that every "thing" will have the ability to be a computer. With chip sizes continually shrinking, the 5-10 year window into the future projects microchips that near zero in size…14 nanometers, even down to 7 nm; that’s the equivalent to 21 atoms across. All that is required to be considered a computer according to Brian (and rightfully so) is five things: some memory, computational power, a data connection, a way to interact (user interface), and a power source. He goes even further stating that at this point, anything can become a “meaningful platform to interact and entertain.”

To put the last statement in context, think about waking up in the morning and having your bed sheets tell your coffee pot to begin brewing, then after you put on your favorite workout shirt, a display shows a data screen in the sleeve telling you that the embedded smartfabric senses that your meals over the last few days have caused one pound of weight gain. Then this data is transferred to an app that automatically plots a course for you to do some additional running over the next few days in order to balance out your caloric intake and get you back into prime condition. Since you prefer running outside, your version 4.0 Google Glass instantly shows your workout course on an augmented reality heads-up display (HUD), as well as overlaying a visible asynchronous ghost of yourself running the same course the last time you over ate and needed additional exercise. To take the exercise analogy one step further, what if the HUD was also capable of manipulating your immediate environment during your run? For instance, continuing that previous example, your over eating has caused you to drag a little bit and your pace has slowed to a near crawl. Now, the HUD displays zombies, hungry wolves, a H U G E Indiana Jones style boulder, or whatever, coming at you and in order to “survive” you must sprint or increase your speed considerably in order to get away. If the zombies, wolves, or whatever, get you, the data is automatically transferred to your social profile on Nike+ showing your efforts for the day. You better pick up the pace, or all your virtual running buddies will laugh at you. Dig deep!

It doesn’t require much imagination to conceive of a zillion other examples as to how this technology will be implemented and will aid in the quality of life for everybody who embraces it. I see all of this applying to what we call transmedia today-- we will lose the trans- prefix, and instead it will only be referred to as “media” once again; media is media. Cross-platform entertainment will very soon become the norm; it will be expected from the vast majority of content producers, and there will be genuinely helpful and novel approaches to getting your produced content in front of the exact people you are trying to reach through your digital marketing campaigns.