Those who've followed this website during the past years, will acknowledge this is a great break through in the advancement of AI conversation technology in our homes: Amazon introduces Echo, a home devices with a build in chatbot named Alexa, responding to your voice and taking all kinds of commands. User can ask for weather reports, set alarms, create to-do lists, and have it play music all via voice command. Alexa can also be used to shop at Amazon. And Alexa is funny!

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Gradually we’re getting used to an environment that responses to our voices. A next step is that the global brands will be included in Alexa. ‘Could you please pass me through to Billy (where Billy is the name of agent of Bol.com), allowing you to ask questions about your specific order at this brand. We’re getting there, step by step…

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• Brand-dialogue

Found on 'The Futurist': We can’t see something behind a wall unless there is a mirror nearby that can capture the object’s reflection. But a new camera developed by researchers from the universities of British Columbia and Bonn has no such limitations. The camera reconstructs scattered rays of light to accurately depict images of objects that are completely outside its immediate field of view.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

In the new world we’re currently building not only the rules of the ‘current - casting- media’ will be cracked, also the laws of human nature, not allowing us to view behind walls.

What would it mean when these kind of camera are operational in security? You can’t hide anymore! And robots will make decisions on what they see.

We will have to get used we can’t hide anything anymore, everything will be seen, and privacy is a concept of the past. This might sound awkard, but we won;t care. At all. We simply won’t have anything to hide left in the peaceful world of pamper planet.

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• 2050-2100: Pamper planet

Mc Donalds is using computers to get order from customers.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

It won’t take long before we can use an smart phone app to place and pay an order through the McDonalds network.

We will have to get used to the dry facts that computers and robots will take over all the work there is, and that a economy can grown without growth in jobs. The ‘jobless recovery’ is definitely a new phenonemom we need to take into account.

Related trends

• 2020-2035: Mediacompletion

Summly Launch from Summly on Vimeo.

Nick D’Aloisio, a 16-year-old iOS developer based in London, England, is the mastermind behind this amazing iPhone app. Summly thrives on a high end algorithm. The Summly algorithm accomplishes this using a number of machine learning techniques and “genetic” algorithms — a search heuristic that mimics evolution.

D’Aloisio says that Summly works best with well-formulated articles that conform to a consistent structure. This lets the algorithm learn what’s important — and where to find that important information — more easily. Tech articles and news articles tend to marry well with Summly’s algorithm, as does the consistently organized content from the New York Times and the BBC. The app doesn’t do quite as well with narrative text written in the third person, but D’Aloisio says that there are no areas that are seriously troublesome to his algorithm.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Computer try to understand in much more details what we find important and this is a step in this direction. This will immediately be followed by connecting it to social media: what do our friends, our family, our colleagues find important? People want to know about the news before they hear it from others. That’s where news coaching brands tap into.

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Facebook has recently totally redesigned their search function called Graph Search. Search becomes social!

Instead of 'trail running' you'll find yourself searching for 'my friends for like trail running', friends who like 'road trips', 'friends who like dancing', 'bands my friends listen to', 'friends who work at my company and like to ski', 'national parks my friends have visited', 'photos of my friends before 1995',

Running in beta now, but this will drastically change consumer buying behavior just with a few simple next steps.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

It’s just a next step in the media evolution. Soon Facebook Graph search will be available andbe voice activated, like Apple Siri and Google Now. And the effect will even be stronger when coaching brands start to connect with Facebook allowing for sharing even more details about consumers interactions with brands.

What about:

• Cable providers my friends like?
• Insurances my friends have?
• Banks liked by my friends?
• Supermarkets liked by my friends?
• Restaurants nearby my friends like?
• Airlines preferred by my friends ?
• What is the rating of my friends of this sports shoes?
• Cars my friends like
• Sunglass brands my friends like
• Best holiday hotel in Ibiza according to my friends?

Facebook Graph Search is of the most important innovation since the introduction of the Internet. This will change buying behavior of consumers forever.

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• 2020-2035: Mediacompletion
• Brand coming out

In this 4 page article (1, 2, 3, 4, 4x3MB in pdf) for FoodMagazine I'm outlining what retailers can do to anticipate the social media trend.

Key is that they will integrate their customer loyalty cards with Facebook. This will allow them to recommend what friends of consumer advice them to buy. It will change the landscape of retail forever.....

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• 2020-2035: Mediacompletion

KLM recently announced that it will be changing its baggage policy for European flights. For tickets booked as from 22 April 2013, check-in baggage will be a paid option for all passengers travelling in Economy Class. An exception to this rule has been made for our valued Flying Blue Ivory members (like me).

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

The end of the 4P (or 5P) marketing mix of Kotler in near . It was introduced when we started to think seriously about combining new mass production manufacturing technique with mass communication.

Now, everything will be customised to the individual customer, and ‘personal pricing’ is part of the game. Soon, we won’t be able to purchase any product without getting a personal price. Yes, also in the supermarkets around the corner.

A breakthrough in energy: Professor Muammer Yildiz, visiting the Delft University of Technology, where I studied myself, demonstrates a magnet motor that taps into the zero field, and thus doesn't need a battery, nor natural resources or voltage plugs at all!! Isn't that revolutionary? Check out the video (first minute is in Dutch, rest is in English or English subtitled).

Applications are obviously unlimited. But what about having those machines all over Africa? Wouldn't that speed up developments? Certainly when combined with media technology.

Hopefully this invention will not be hold back by the powerful and lobbying energy companies all over the planet this time :-s. A patent can easily be bought for a huge amount and then disappear in a drawer somewhere to get back to the oil business. That's one of the disadvantages of patents.... It stops innovation..

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• 2020-2035: Mediacompletion

This LED grid created by students of the Delft University of Technology contains 66x28x28=76032 pixels. It contains animations of rotating flowers and more artitic experssions.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

In the future, these grids will be unlimited detailed. Now 76,032 pixels seems a lot, but at that time we’ll easily have 76,032,000,000 pixels. The pixels will be so small that our human eye won’t be able to distinguish them from each other.

Applications will be countless. We’ll have conversations with other humans on a distance, or even interact with virtual humans. Prototyping, education, and brand interaction. Everything will change with technologies like these.

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• 2020-2035: Mediacompletion

Above you'll find a recommendation by Maria Rita Fiasco of Gruppo Pragma after I've presented during their road show in Rome, Milan and Trieste for the the launch of their new conversational agent / virtual assistant platform Intoote.

Below you'll find the testimonial in Italian

Amsterdam Airport Schiphol has automated the baggage drop-off. Passengers who have already checked-in are now required to put their baggage in a machine which gives instructions how to label the baggage. No personal any longer involved! Most of us have to get used to it however.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

ALL repeating tasks will be automated. Either by virtual humans, or (humanoid) robots. As a result, society will totally change. The world wide population will be extremely productive and we will have to work less. It is even unavoidable for us all to work less to guarantee that at least a certain percentage of the population has a job, which is a requirement to keep the earth peaceful, and we all can contribute to society and we are all appreciated. This example demonstrates our journey in that direction.

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Today, I'll be speaking in Italy for a new chatbot company: Intoote during their launch campaign called Aks Me Please. It's a joint venture by Gruppo Pragma and Dialobot.

I always predicted this industry would have a huge future and therefore I'm very pleased to present to the press, potential clients and anyone interested in this new startup.

If you are in Rome, Milan or Triest.the coming days, please find a moment to drop by!

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The interactive flash animation Scale of the Universe allows you to browse the universe through hundreds, possibly more than thousand objects of all different sizes

In my book I predicted that all company/brand logos would be animated in the future. The static version would be considered as boring, dull, flat in the future. Well', I'm not on top of the trend anymore, but just stumbled upon Aurora, a 3D tool for logo animation, which is proof to me that the market for logo animation starts to grow.

Ticketmaster Teams With Facebook So You Can Sit Next To Your Friends. Those who are reserving their seats will see a mock-up of an arena seat map indicating where their Facebook friends will be sitting, so the can reseerve a spot next or closeby.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

I’ve been writing about this phenonemon since 2004, and now it’s becoming reality. Finally, I’ve been waiting for this!!!

Soon, all our purchases will be powered by social media. For example: the next time when I visit a restaurant in Nigeria, I can exactly see where my friends have been, and what their experience were. This will influence my decisions way more, than any (anonymous) review site can ever do.

We’re social creatures you know;)

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Brand agents, the perfect brand representatives. Emotional, intelligent, empathic, helpful and available 24/7. However, innovation can stop due to the 130 confusing synonyms a brand agent comes across with.

Brand Agents are artificial employees that represent brands in an intelligent and bi-directional engaging conversation. They typically appear in customer service related areas on websites, where they replace the frequently asked questions. However, they now tend to move to home pages of large business 2 consumer brands. Their responsibility is growing. A Brand Agent used to be responsible for about 30% of the questions concerning customer service about recently purchased products, but now some of them are able to answer 95% of the questions. Furthermore, they are no longer only about earlier purchases, but they also provide information about products the consumer has not yet bought. Brand Agents are shifting in their area of expertise!

Related trends

• Brand-dialogue