k-Reader is smart software from American company K-NFB Reading for the cell phone, which makes it possible for the phone to read out text on paper. In the video you can see a demonstration (skip to 6:30). A photo of packaging, a flyer or newspaper article is read out. The k-Reader software is installed on the Nokia N82 for about 1,200 Euros.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This innovation is characterized as an important development for blind people, but it’s in fact even more important. It reduces the necessity of literacy. Stronger still, in countries in which people can’t read this means an enormous amount of progress. Of course a lot still has to happen: the readings will become more fluent in the coming years, for example. And we won’t need to take a picture anymore, but just wave the cell phone past with the spoken question of ‘what does that say?’ and it’ll be enough. And a step after will be also if it’s written in a foreign language.

It’ll help third world economies enormously with the development of their country without people learning to read. It’ll take away the hurdle of visiting a country where you don’t speak the language. It’ll bring together people from all over the world in a different way. It starts with a useful device for the blind.

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Glubble facilitates social contacts between a family. Every family has its own family site for photos, a shared calendar can be managed for nice and less nice activities (such as the dentist), birthdays of family members, or keep each other up-to-date about what they're doing at a specific time. Furthermore parents can limit the amount of possible websites their child could visit.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Social coaching brands help with the maintenance of relationships with other people. Where in the first phase we kept phone numbers in our phone, in the second phase entered the type of relationship, this type of brand will emphasize the difference in relationships. Glubble currently emphasizes families, but when this will soon be connected to other families (for example at what time little Emily has to be home after playing with a friend), it’ll also facilitate other types of relationships. Soon we’ll be able to ‘call’ through this type of brand and the spoken intention in our conversation (‘so tonight we’ll meet at 8 pm’) be analyzed immediately, registered in the agenda to remind us of this at a quarter to eight. Not yet, but later. It’s all happening step by step.

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The movie shows an airplame (the MC2) of 10 grams that avoids walls on its own. It's the research area of microflyers of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems (LIS) of the Swiss EPFL.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

The world won’t become bigger, but much smaller. Media technology will disappear from sight; robots will replace them in time. Small airplanes will ensure that we don’t have to go back to retrieve the apple we forgot for along the way; that’s taken care of immediately. Or they can hold things in the air that we now need someone else to hold. What to think of a light-weight screen (think grams) that’s held up in the air by microflyers on a clear day? Or a flag waving without a flag pole? With a lot of things we think it normally belongs on the ground. Soon everything can happen in the air. Soon. It’ll take a year or twenty yet, but it’s coming.

Eight-year-old children learn best when you reward them positively ('well done'). They're barely sensitive to negative feedback ('too bad, not good'). Twelve-year-olds react in the opposite manner. They're more sensitive to people pointing out mistakes.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Small children often react intuitively, very close to nature, very strongly in the here and now. At a certain age, they’ll start to think, something that developed countries stimulate strongly. ‘Thinking’ is valued much more highly than ‘feeling’. If you feel good, you don’t want to be slowed down, but be stimulated. Doesn’t that go for everyone? But we simply can’t do everything we want to do. You can’t just eat an apple in a supermarket, walk into someone’s house or touch people. This perhaps almost automatic behavior that children still have is something we need to block with our minds. They’re the norms and values, collective thoughts that we need to feel safe in a society.

People are only limitedly able to raise children. They throw everything into it, but still they’re unsure. That’s especially the case because people today only have a few children, not even helped to raise their brothers or sisters or have had a lot of experience with previous children. These kinds of insight will lead to personal child brands to help us raise our children. They’ll literally (!) listen along to what’s happening in a dialogue with our child, in an incident for example. Facial expressions, body stance and body language will be measured through all kinds of sensors. To discuss the incident with us later, at night when the little one’s asleep. Completely automated. Before this is common practice, however, we’re talking about 2050, the time of the pamper planet.

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• 2050-2100: Pamper planet

Through the renewed Windows Live Photo Gallery people can't just group their photos based on date or location, but also by people. They can also edit the photos. For example, you can make the photo black and white with a single click of the mouse and you can rotate the photos in any angle.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Brand will start to recognize the images around us to advertise with them. Brands that specialize in social contact between people, that facilitate with personal contact (such as (Windows) Live, a social coaching brand in the making), also recognize our friends. From their photograph, but later also by their voice, their walk or their behavior. In the long term, even better than we can recognize them ourselves. This is a step in that direction.

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• Coaching brands

Google has found a way to visualize search results in videos. For example, someone searching for 'Health' will receive a line under the (YouTube) video with markers when the person says the word 'health'. This is known to Google as Gaudi.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Currently Google responds to our typed query, soon we can sit behind our tv and ask ‘health’. And after that ‘When was that guy talking about health?’ And even later it’ll search for all kinds of synonyms. It goes on and on. Not just for Google, but for all brands. We’ll be able to ask such questions of all brands. Like it’s always been the most normal thing on the planet. For now we’re very busy with reaction properly to the clicking and typing of our customers, but in the meantime technology is a few steps ahead of us.

Related trends

• Brand-dialogue

A research team from the University of California, Berkeley is working on the development of such small (image) sensors that they can be 'printed' unto any surface. This way a 'sensing tape' could be created, for example: a camera as duck tape so to speak. You tear off a piece, tape it onto the ceiling, your car or your forehead and you've gained a camera.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Everthing will react to us, but everything can only react if everything can observe us. Developments like this add to that. In this example it’s for visible light, but it’ll become truly interesting when we can observe very simple phenomena that pass human observation. Then we can train for that and get the best out of ourselves. It’ll take a while; we’re talking about 2050, the time of Pamper Planet.

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• 2050-2100: Pamper planet

On Olifantenwassen.nl, a recruitment site of IT company Cap Gemini, people can make their own movies with their friends in the star role. For example, I got sent this personal movie with myself in the leading role.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Currently as a photo clearly placed in this; in a few years we can give our friends a leading role in a movie without seeing the difference. We can add artificial humans that look like real people. Or animals that act like people. The virtual world will become more and more real and our brains will have increasingly more trouble separating what’s ‘real’ from what’s ‘imagined’. In this time brand agents, artificial representations of brands, that look like real people, and enter a dialogue with us the most normal thing in the world.

During the International Day of Peace, War Child Netherlands organized a virtual Peace March on the online community Habbo. The goal of the march was to make the youth stop to think about war and to call on them to support the necessity of peace. The peace march was part of the Global Peace Gathering organized by War Child and Habbo in 32 countries. Beside the Peace March Habbos could sign a Peace Petition by War Child with which they could show their support.

During the march the visitors of Habbo, the so-called Habbos, made a communal trip through different virtual rooms. They were accompanied by several youths from Uganda, which visited the online world from a refuge camp.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

The Habbo world knows no country borders, just as the whole virtual world doesn’t know them. As a result, people will act more like world citizens, starting with the smallest amongst us. This generation, which will control the world in 2050 will view other cultures completely differently from previous generations. And they’ll also rule the world differently.

The micro airplanes (roughly 30 centimeter long) in this movie can transport small packages extremely quickly, useful for, for example, emergency transports in health care.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

It’s a part of the development of the network economy. The economy in which everything is flexible, scaleable and especially realtime. Soon we can order something from a pavement and will have it delivered within an hour. Other methods will remain cheaper, but this is much faster, so you’ll really have something.

Through VandaagOpStap (Dutch) people can look for activities and events that are happening today. With a database of over 9000 activities VandaagOpStap is the biggest outings-website of the Netherlands. People can select from 11 categories, amongst which are 'active entertainment', 'special buildings', 'day outings', 'art and culture', 'music'. Those contain about 10 subcategories. It's also possible to search using region and city. When selecting an event, the website also displays nearby restaurants.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This is how VandaagOpStap is a coaching brand in the making, a coaching brand that entertains us outside our doors, possibly named a personal outdoor brand. That starts with completeness in the categories and VandaagOpStap is well on its way.

Furthermore it shows how the network economy is developing. We used to deal with guides, with as most extreme example the theater guides where we had to book half a year in advance. In the network economy everything happens realtime: the moment we feel like doing something, a personal outdoor brand can immediately sort all possibilities that suit our profile, only possibilities that are truly possible. Furthermore coaching brands will also take along the diaries of friends; after all you rarely go alone. Personal outdoor brands make sure that you always have something fun to do outside your doorstep. That makes the whole world more spontaneous. More fun, if you will.

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Users of social network MySpace can allow the site to watch along through the webcam and publish the resulting movie immediately. The big difference is that people don't first have to save the movie and then upload it.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Brands are beginning to understand the consumer’s remark of ‘would you look at that!’. Currently with MySpace, but soon you can show an insurance company what the damage is immediately, directly from your cell phone’; your health coaching brand can see the wound immediately after falling or the plumber can see the situation in your kitchen cupboard. Furthermore the brand can also remember this video-conference and analyze it automatically. It’s progressing step by step and MySpace is a pioneer in that area.

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• Brand-dialogue

The new iTunes automatically creates playlists based on your own music collection. After selecting a number, you need to press the 'genius' button and then iTunes will automatically select similar songs. You can also give Genius the command to recommend music you don't own yet. Then you can buy those.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This is how music coaching brands are brought to life. They’re specialists in all kinds of music ever created and can make recommendations. Soon iTunes will look at you literally (!), gauge your mood, and start the music. No whining about buying, but of course you do have to pay for this added value. And if you’re truly touched, iTunes will be able to recommend a concert. This is how iTunes will become a music buddy that travels everywhere with you.

Marillion offers its music for free in exchange for email address, country and city. By entering this, you can download their newest album Happiness Is the Road from p2p-network Musicglue. You can also choose not to enter an information and pay for the album.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Owning music will disappear as a concept. It’ll be all about listening to music and it’ll be the trick to select the right music at the right time. That’ll be the added value for the digital troubadour. That’ll be the added value we’ll start to pay for. Popbands, transaction brands compared to the music coaching brands, offer their music for free. It helps them make contact with the public so that they can build up a fanbase and earn money from concerts and merchandising. Popbands are building a brandculture around themselves, a brand with a symbolic function, because your music choice is a part of your identity which is formed and anchored early on in your life. Popbands first have to know who they’re dealing with and Marillion is taking a step in that direction.

Related trends

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Lisa, the brand agent of Rabo Mobiel (Rabo Mobile; Dutch), now also listens to open questions asked by the consumer. Whoever calls customer services (0900-9890) will immediately get to speak to Lisa. With the help of open question speech recognition Lisa can bring them into contact with the most suitable person of customer support. If they're not immediately available, customers won't need to stay on hold, but will be called back. That increases the positive customer experiences and efficiency of customer services.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

And again the dialogue is shaped a little further. Lisa’s already answering simple questions, but she’ll be able to handle more and more complex questions. Currently Rabo Mobiel still searches for a specialist in the call center, but soon the questions will become so specialistic that Lisa will connect you with the specialist of Rabo Mobiel in the Netherlands and then in Europe and eventually in the world. We manage to automate ever more communication; ever more interesting is the work that’s left.

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In the London-based restaurant Inamo you can order food from your table, play games with other people in the restaurant, pay or order a cab. A beamer which projects images onto the black table surfaces makes it possible and through the use of a mouse visitors can browse through the menu and view images of the food. After placing your order you can view how your food is prepared using the 'chef cam'.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Two structural developments are hiding in this example. Firstly this kind of development will lead to the creation of a next generation entertainment place where you can also eat. Like arcades arose from technology, technology in the restaurant kitchen will develop. Furthermore the delivery of additional service will definitely be given a shot. Soon automatic payment will be so smoothly arranged that we won’t even check the receipt. We’ll be recognized when we enter, get the suggestion of the month tailored to our wants, and we’ll just as easily walk outside again and money will be arranged for us. Also in large restaurants, also in other branches of those restaurants. That’s how the dialogue can bind people to the (restaurant)brand and this is an example of a development in that direction.

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