What’s will digital look like in 2013?

Last week I was invited by Chinwag Live to be on the panel of their Xmas Futures event where the `Experts in Digital’ are grilled for two hours on what the future would hold for digital in 2013. It was a great session and you will be able to listen to the podcast from the Chinwag site soon. I was joined on the panel by:

Jonathan Mitchener – Futurologist & Principal Research Scientist, Devices BT

Simon Collister – Head of Digital, Weber / Shandwick

Neville Hobson – Communicator, podcaster, blogger

Ewan MacLeod – Founder of Mobile Industry Review

Richard Titus – Head of User Experience, BBC Future Media and Technology (Chair)

I really enjoyed the event and some great thinking came out of the session as to what direction we are headed. We started looking at Mobile Devices where I predicted that we would have multiple devices moving forward, but we would access our online life (contacts, mail, pictures, videos, documents) from one central device. Neville (loved Neville) commented that one of the main obstacles in making this happen is the current lack of collaboration from the major players. Jonathan (who I really liked and will be keeping in touch with) then discussed his three C’s of future devices. Co-Operation: where we will see devices working with multiple software platforms. Clarification: A deeper understanding of what we want to do when using social networks, and Connection: Your device is clever enough to know who you will want to connect to dependent on your lifestyle.

We then discussed how user behaviour will change in 2013 and I recited a conversation I was having with Helen Keenan (@technokitten) at Amplified08 where she told me about “continuous partial attention”. You can read more about it from Linda Stone here but essentially it’s the process of not wanting to miss anything. We are having to listen and participate to multiple conversations at any one time which is something our generation finds hard to do. For the younger generation coming forward, they are already used to this behaviour and so it will only get easier for them. Neville commented that people are becoming more used to sharing personal data about themselves as the benefits of them doing so are becoming more enticing however we must ensure that the current levels of security is increased.

A really good question from the floor asked “What will be the biggest annoyance in 2013″. Despite being misquoted by an audience member here, my actual response as you will hear on the podcast was the lack of use of microformats where the ability is currently available to pass information from site to site. The example I gave is if I was connected with Neville on Twitter (which I am) if I register with social network like Facebook and Neville is already on there, Facebook should be able to establish where we are connected in other spaces and ask if I want to add him as a friend there also.

We got into a discussion on how the third world are using technology to make life changing experiences. Jonathan cited how in Africa it is so expensive to have a bank account and no where to actually withdraw money from, people use their mobiles to do their banking via text message. I discussed how in Tanzanier, it takes people up to 6 hours to walk to their local butcher to get the weeks meat which by the they got there had run out anyway, and so now people can text in advance to let the butcher know they are coming. Ewan then commented on how farmers can now check the prices of meat via mobile in advance to decide if they wish to go to market. these are life changing experiences that we tend to take for granted in the West and I think it’s great that people are able to do more for themselves through the use of technology.

Richard then asked “Will the Third world surpass Europe and be more mobile?” Neville responded “No” as he believes that Silicon Valley will always lead the advancements. You can hear the full podcast when it is released but Jonathan summed up the event wonderfully stating “innovation brings flexibility, but with it the need to make more decisions about how we work and how we live. We’re not ready to make those decisions yet”.