The line between banners and widgets (an intelligent coding behind a space on a website that can be shared by different websites) is slowly disappearing. This example shows a banner of an event that users can mark. This way users can put the date directly in their diaries, invite friends, set a reminder (maybe the user wants to decide later), put it on their personal page on Facebook (without showing it to friends or other people) or just book tickets straight away.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

A smart publisher, read a smart brand, makes sure that someone who’s set something as a reminder has a different ‘show’ the next time. To someone who’s already booked you don’t need to show ‘book now’ again. And that smart publisher will at some point know so much about a customer that they’ll know exactly what to offer next time. And that ‘publisher’ won’t earn money from the ad revenue, but from actually selling products. This is how publishers can develop into coaching brands. This is a step in that direction.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

Google offers American BlackBerry users the ability to search through Google Maps Mobile using voice commands. How it works is simple. By pressing 0 the map centers around the location of the user. By pressing a special button the user can pronounce the business or the name of the business (for example 'ATM' or 'cash machine'). After releasing, Google gets to work.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Brands are starting to react to everything the consumer says, how the consumer watches, what the consumer does. In time the text the consumer writers will become less and less important. Currently we’ve still built a whole society on them. That’s going to be brought down in the coming years. It’s all about reacting to your conversational partner. It’s all about the dialogue.

Scientists at Tel Aviv University in Israel have developed an electronic ear to measure a voice's vibrato. Vibrato means the regular changes of height in a tone (in an instrument or singing voice), the 'trembling' of tone height, as it were. Vibrato can make a tone sound warmer.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

New technology like this can lead to all sorts of new applications. This shows how a coaching brand can develop in the area of singing: we’ll be guided from when we’re a small child and receive coaching without needing an expensive tutor. Another application is in call centers that recognizes emotions in voices and that the scripted text can take into account. Or that, in videos of young new talents, we can find the truly talented people extremely fast. But eventually this is about the automation of listening: brands will be able to understand every detail in a customer’s voice. And for all I know you’ll sing what it is you want.

Digital photos connect to the intrinsic need of human beings to relive past experiences. I call this phenomena the nostalgic human. An older technique to help this person was the micro mosaic. During the industrialization a new class of rich people was formed and they traveled. They'd come to foreign countries of which they'd like to bring home something to remember the trip by. Those could be made by this technique. They're miniscule pieces of glass that (feel like) they form a smooth surface. The postcard followed later of course and then the photograph and the video. Digital photography today is another step in between stages.

You can now attach avatars to your browser. Your virtual identity (or one of them) 'walks' along with you across the internet at the bottom of your page. You can then meet and interact with other avatars. E-coaches too can walk with their 'client' along webshops, social networks or other websites.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

We’ll encounter each other more and more real on the internet. Right now as a character, in a few years a natural image of ourselves, including our own specific walk, our current hairdo and our current clothing. We’ll see ourselves walking along life-sized, our ‘character’ will do what we want. If we raise our hand our avatar will do the same (but then in the language or dialect needed at that moment). If we observe something our avatar will have spotted it just a touch sooner. And of course we won’t be walking across the ‘flat’ internet websites (such as Google, eBay or Amazon of today), but in full 3D worlds where we don’t just have something in front of us, but also behind us, above us and beside us. That’s the world we’re build and the trend this development fits into seamlessly.

Soon I'll be going on Vipassana meditation for ten days. An important element of this meditation is 'clear perception . That means that you have to learn to let go of everything you've learned in line (such as social behavior, safe behavior and words that go with objects). Even assumptions like 'this is my arm' can be forgotten (like a baby hasn't really realized this either). What you're learning in actual fact is how to see things loose of all the earlier associations you've collected in your life again. You'll learn to see them anew, come into the world anew like a baby. With that you'll be set free from all existing thought patterns. I think I'll be able to use this both professionally as privately very well.

Professionally because in a changing world you should only look at how things really are not how we've made them, or how we look at reality now. Because of that I was wondering if people who are (much) less in contact with other people (like autistic people are, for example) would be in a position to discover new ways from a different starting point. Some autistic people (savant syndrome) are capable of extraordinary feats that we cannot explain, never mind accomplish ourselves. But maybe a different education, from the very beginning, would enable to produce such feats en masse. Then we'll have a completely different generation of people. I'm very curious about which new insights I'll discover (but I'm not expecting any special feats; I'm primary going for rest ).

Eldery demented people in Japan with a robot seal called Paro. Since Paro showed up in the elderly home Mori-noie two demented ladies found each other in caring for the robot animal. Wherever it appears it creates a better disposition, better social behavior and even improved health. This is proven by long-term research by Paro's inventor Takanori Shibata of the biorobotics department of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology. Shibata calls his invention an 'Artificial Emotional Creature'.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Our human brains aren’t designed to have feelings for other creatures with our ratio. Feelings are created on a much lower level. We’ll get an emotional bond with this kind of creature that demented elderly people are already displaying. As these creatures get more intelligent, the bond will become stronger.

With Air, Bed & Breakfast you can spend the night in people's homes. You only pay a small fee.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This is how the added value pillar of every existing concept will be knocked down. A hotel has, for example, a bed to offer, but also takes care of the cleaning, the security and breakfast. That’s what makes a hotel a hotel, and that made the offers comparable in the old days. In those days you could make a guide book, organizing by destination, class or price. In the demand-driven era you can see ‘I want a bed, take care of my own cleaning, my own security and my own breakfast’. That’s in actual fact the model that’s being offered here. Personal travel brands will sort everything and just ask what it is that you’d like.

Inside Trip has refined searching for flights to such an extent that not just the price counts as a criteria, but also the amount of transfers, the risk of delays and the average amount of times luggage gets lost.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

We’re guided better and better. All generic aspects will start to count. All personal aspects will start to count too. That’s the added value of the mobility coaching brands.

Through SMSParking inhabitants of Amsterdam can pay for their parking with a text message. A simple text message at the beginning and end of parking will do. The driver parks his/her car and sends a text message with the zone-number of the parking lot and the license plate number of the car to 4030. The system confirms that parking has started with a text message. Placing a separate parking ticket in your car will no longer be necessary. As soon as the driver is done parking, (s)he sends a message with just the letter 'q' to state that they quit parking there. The system again confirms this with a text message which will contain the zone, the license plate number, the time, the date and the price.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

In the dialogue between human and brand payment is a normal part. Soon if we say to our brand ‘Yes, that’s what I want’ it’ll be given to you immediately and the payment will be dealt with immediately as well. For parking this means that our mobility coaching brand will soon see that we’re standing in a specific spot, organize the payment for us and give us an overview at the end of the month. If we want, we’ll also be given tips on how to reduce the costs of parking, but some people won’t need that. The mobility coaching brand will understand precisely.

Symbian is an operating system for cell phones like Microsoft Windows is for computers. Symbian doesn't work on all cell phones, but it does work on, for example, the ones manufactured by Nokia. Some of the big cell phone manufacturers, amongst which Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Motorola, have announced that they will start a Symbian Foundation. Its most important goal will be turning the Symbian OS into open source, which means that the source code, the big secret of Symbian if you will, becomes accessible to everyone.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

The great thing about this development is that soon not only a few thousand people on the Symbian head office will be working on new versions of the system, but millions of programmers across the globe. This ultimate form of co-creation means that you can involve millions of people with their brand, you can create fans that infect their neighborhood in turn.

For now this works for software developments, but in time it’ll also go for electronics, furniture, clothing, food, even bank products. The big trend is called brand coming out.

Related trends

• Brand coming out

American passengers who travel with Delta Air Lines from La Guardia Airport in New York can now download their boarding pass onto their cell phone prior to their flight. That way these passengers will no longer have to wait in line at the Check In desk when they arrive at the airport and instead walk straight towards the Gate. There the mobile boarding pass and the passenger's identity will be checked.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This shows how ‘recognition’ by brands becomes extremely relevant to the consumer: it means comfort. Each time consumers let go of some part of their identity, each time brands learn something more about them, consumers will be helped better, faster or more completely. This is how the dialogue has value for both parties.

Psychologist Savid Moxon has researched the effect that so-called 'Sound Snacks' have on the physical and mental wellness of men and women. 'Sound Snacking' is the listening to short pieces of music and/or parts of records, something that a grand total of 93% of the young (Dutch) music fans (18-24 years old) do regularly. The research, in which a good 200 adolescents participated, shows that men are far more able to judge which musical genres influence them and how different sounds will make them feel than women.

Chinese CKing is the first in the world to create a cell phone, the CKing E1000, with a built-in projector. With it users can easily share movies with others through using a wall in the vicinity.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

We can project everything life-sized around us. Soon we’ll be able to point out things in these images and our cell phone will respond to them. Or control them with our voice or even our posture. It’s getting ever easier to picture something of that world. A world wherein brands fill in the dialogue in a completely different way from what we think of now.

This robot of the MIT balances on two wheels while he gracefully throws a ball.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

We’re getting the subtleties of natural movements more and more under control. Soon we’ll combine all the new insights and create robots of which we can’t see the difference at first glance. Only when we start talking to them we’ll be given our first clue. But as the decennia pass those doubts will disappear and robots can grow to be your best friends.

The 'Fluidhand', tested at the Orthopedic University Hospital in Heidelberg, is a prototype of a prosthetic hand that can close around objects, even those with an irregular surface. The hand feels softer, is more elastic and more natural than current prosthetic hands.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

From all kinds of starting points we’re busy making artificial humans. Sooner or later these artificial humans will be given an individual life, they’ll act like people and we’ll treat them like people. Purely and simply because our brains can’t do anything else.