Microsoft's new interactive table panels Surface again provide a totally different medium for us. The horizontal panel, which we will find in bars, casinos or at home, reacts to our fingers. We put our mobile phone on the panel and our pictures appear automatically. We select, enlarge and reduce our pictures, we listen to music and we play games with each other, like poker. You can see it in Microsoft's demo. And this is not the end yet. Now we drag pictures to our mobile phone, in the future we will drag videos to our TV, and the TV will react to us. Or we will have a smaller version of this panel, replacing the remote control. We will be able to page all brands on this type of displays, using speech. The brand agents then will appear in their own world, seen from above if we like. We will experience brands in a totally different way. This is a small step in that direction.

In the game Where's Cindy players try to locate Cindy. They have to follow clues around Google Earth (al). Although the clues link back to conventional web sites this still is a small step in the evolution of 3D worlds. In the future we can navigate over a virtual globe in 3D, to find buildings that don't exist, which we can enter and where our adventures continue. This is a small step in that direction.

Google has added so-called Street view to Google maps for several big cities in the US, among which New York and San Francisco. Users can pick a spot on the map, and Google figures out what the view will be in a direction the user then can change (al). Google this way maps the world even preciser. Now through pictures; in the future recent pictures or (video) images of people taken a minute ago will be added. And so for every spot in the world. But this is only the basis for the mixed experiences to be projected directly in our glasses. Cars, people, containers, billboards etc will be erased if we want. Or we get the image of the street 50 years ago. And we get people projected we would like to see. Or brand agents if we like. Interesting stores will be highlighted in our view, the best restaurant get special attention, and if we should meet somebody who is walking here anyway, we won't miss that opportunity. The world will never be like before. Unless we go 'unplugged', the newest trend in 2020: feel the world on your bare feet. Scary...

Having lived life digitally (ultra-sounds, birth, youth, life as a grown-up, family reunions, and funeral: everything is recorded), our digital lives from now on continue even after death. At Dutch cemetery Larikshof in Rhenen there is a tombstone with a small TV-screen on which images of the deceased can be seen: the digizerk (digital tombstone). Relatives and friends can show pictures and videos on this screen. According to supplier steenhouwerij Rijtink, this is the first digital tombstone in the world. The screen now operates on a battery, but the company is working on tombstones operated through solar cells (sr, Dutch). Pictures and videos are virtual representatives of people's real lives. In a next step, these screens are connected to the internet. Relatives then can consult our social-network pages through the tombstones, watch the video of the funeral and the condolence register, listen to their favorite music, and see where friends will be buried later. And we can still interact with the avatar, the virtual representative of the deceased. Like our voice mail today, these virtual representatives keep reacting. The contact after all stays. And it will show behavior that will be an awful lot like the behavior of the deceived. A different world, that's for sure.

Through Google Earth and Google Maps you can now hear the world's sounds. Elephants in Africa, the rain forest in Brazil, and even the bells of the Notre Dame in Paris. American Bernie Krause has been gathering sound materials for 40 years, varying from singing birds and the cracking of melting glaciers, to rustling woods and the singing of whales. His company Wild Sanctuary has now published these sounds in the virtual world (dc, Dutch). And thus the virtual world becomes more and more real. Now with recorded sounds, recorded at a certain moment. In the future we will choose what sound of what moment we want to hear. From 40 years ago, from last week, or real time. Which will be like a telephone conversation. And that shows that the virtual world easily integrates phone, radio, and TV. It becomes one world. This is just a small step in that direction.

Eighty Turkish mosques in the Netherlands shall be connected to a narrow casting network by the end of this year. At the moment 14 mosques already have a screen, providing information and advertisements. The network is financed by advertisers focusing on the Turkish community (em, Dutch). We will see screens and displays at various locations. The tighter the group visiting the location, the more added value the screens get. Through the screens, you could control who enters the location, show which people of your network are inside, or what elements of the experience they valued most. So that we directly know what we should choose. 'Casting' will not be in place any longer though. And we will have to get used to that, step by step.

It is now possible to use water to make a dry (!) interactive 3D screen. In this FogScreen, a Finnish invention, movies, interactive games or people can be projected. The image is created by a PC, we can walk through the screen and it reacts at our fingers. As if sprinkles are falling from the sky, and we can catch them (fc). We make more and more screens for entering the virtual world. This kind of screens we will be able to show at all kinds of public locations. We determine what we see: where we are (virtually), who we see and what brands we interact with. This is a small step in that direction. Watch the video, especially the beginning and end:

Google has created a mobile version of the Google Calendar, which has been optimized for the small mobile display (dc, Dutch). Brands are getting ready to be reached through every possible display: very tiny, a little bit bigger, PC size, TV size, or life-size holographic projection. All possible displays however enter one and the same world. The difference is in the size: it is like peeping through a keyhole, or open the door wide and walk right in. We see or experience virtual 3D brand worlds in which we are welcomed by the virtual brand agents. But first we need to make sure that the different displays link up to each other. This is a step in that direction.

Related trends

• Brand worlds

Through mobile application CheapGas consumers now can get information on cheap gas while they are on the road, filtered by brand preferences. (cz). We connect everything. Product information used to be hard to get, now we get it presented personally and currently, wherever we are. Later our navigation system will take this into account: if you have to get gas, you better take route X or Y. In the end, mobility coaching brands will help you get from A to B, taking all possible circumstances into account: your personal circumstances, your financial circumstances, AND the situation for all possible forms of transport. This is a small step in that direction.

NS International has placed a short interactive commercial in the online Sky Radio broadcasting. Whoever listened to Sky Radio through the special Sky Radio Music player, saw an advertisement which lead to an action site after clicking. On air, a different commercial was played. NS International is the first to experiment with this new kind of advertising (em, Dutch). Radio also becomes interactive. Now in a special player, later in every spot we choose to listen to the radio. We will be able to (verbally) react to anything we hear, to get more information or to undertake action. By that time interrupting commercials will have disappeared, however we will fully start dialogues with brands. But only when we feel like it. This is a small step in that direction.

My Horeca TV will add more than 15.000 Dutch hotel rooms to its narrow casting network this year. My Horeca TV also develops its own programs (em, Dutch). This way, hotel rooms screens gradually become interactive. Now the content grows explosively, later we will make our own decisions of what we watch, wherever in the world we are, and whatever brands we want to be in touch with. Our mobile phone will act as remote control. This is a small step in that direction.

MSNBC.com, the American news brand, introduced a pre-movie video game in which the audience directly interacts with the screen while live news is incorporated. It was a kind of arcade game consisting of a screen of little bars and a ball that can shoot the bars. The bars were filled with live news from msnbc.com while the ball was controlled by the collective actions of the audience. If people generally moved to the right more, the ball went to the right as well (bx) This way the media start to react to us. In the future we will see people in the theater live projected in the movie, or we see avatars in it that are not physically present, and we start carrying out orders in the city, where we meet audiences of other movie theaters. The movie then is only a side issue. And brands can offer this kind of content. We will call these 'branded experiences'. See the video clip.

At Singapore Airport you can find some interactive shop-windows. When touching the window, a 'globe of films' is projected. You can control it by touching the window again. The globe can turn in any direction, and by touching one of the films on the globe, a video is started on a plasma TV next to it. (fc). This way the shop-window becomes more and more interactive, and our experiences become more intense. This is a simple but effective way to do that.

French company T-Immersion has developed a technology to add 3D objects to live video streams. (fc). In this picture the newspaper is photographed, then the video starts playing, and 3D avatars interact with the newspaper. And the video shows more. The virtual world becomes a screen over the real world. In a while, we will walk over the Colosseum in Rome, point our camera, and have a movie replayed in our glasses, our hand phone of any other possible display, exactly from the position we're in at that moment. Thus a completely new dimension evolves.

Related trends

• More 3D

On the internet, the latest KNVB cup final soccer could be watched through four camera positions: Player Cam, Top Cam, Goal Cam, and the Directors Cut. The latter showed the edited images of the regular tv signal: for tv, the game was registered by 26 cameras (em, Dutch). We completely imitate the physical world in the virtual world. Real time, live! At the moment we are still limited to fixed cameras; later we will be able to get any image we want from all cameras, including those of fans in the stadium, real time. We then kind of fly through the stadium with our own camera. Or we fly with somebody else who knows what to pay attention to (with a director or a directing consumer). At this moment, in replay through the last minute or through a game played ten years ago. It gets more and more real. This is a small step in that direction.

All 700,000 companies listed on the business pages of the Dutch phone directory telefoongids.nl are now also listed on Google Earth (em, Dutch). In the virtual world, we completely imitate the physical world. In this building phase we connect everything. This way we will be able to travel everywhere, see everything, experience everything. Like it is real. This is a small step in that direction.