The Chinese Snappark lets consumers add pictures to other pictures. Someone can create a topic by using pictures and tags and others can then add pictures to it. It creates a kind of wiki with pictures.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

People think in images. As soon as they see an image, associations are created in their heads and when it’s easy to gather the pictures, such a system is capable of fast growth. In a next step, this’ll be automatic. For example all pictures of German shepherds together, very concretely, or all images with vertical or horizontal lines, very abstract. In the last example, we might get five people in a row, a picture of bars or of five fingers. Applying that type of creativity can easily be left to computers. In a couple of steps afterwards humor will follow: playing with language, but then we’ll be thirty years further down the line.

YouTube now allows the placement affiliate links. With these consumers are given the chance to praise products. In the example the game Spore with a video of The Sims, another game by EA. When it's sold, the consumer receives a percentage of the profit.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This is how consumers are given a new instrument to promote products. They can make videos to promote and sell products themselves. This is how brands are given a mechanism to facilitate Sales Men, a special type of people that’s naturally aimed at sales. Then brands will be able to find this kind of people and supply them with all sorts of information. It’ll enhance tribal thinking (the thinking in the behavior of individual people in groups) enormously.

Related trends

• Tribal

YouTube offers consumers who upload movies insight in the behavior of the viewer of the movies. Important for this is the feature 'HotSpot'. This gives insight in which fragments people find interesting and which they cease watching.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Shaping virtual experiences will start to react more and more to the participant. Now we measure, learn and can adapt. But it remains static. Soon videos will be built up dynamically (animated), we’ll watch the emotions (and other feedback) of the viewer and use that to shape the rest of the video. Just like a storyteller in the old days knew how to feel out their audience. This is a step in that direction.

Philips has launched a 3-dimensional HDTV for the business sector. This screen, with a resolution four times as large as normal TVs (Quad HDTV), allows the viewing of videos in stereo without additional glasses. The technology is similar to the technology used in stereoscopic post cards. By the by, one can't really call it a TV because there's no tuner in it: watching the programmed video streams of broadcasting companies isn't possible. It costs 25,000 dollars.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

We’re making the world more and more real. This type of screen will break though with game consoles. That we can watch a passive movie (even if it is 3D HDTV) is a nice bonus. With an extra we can even watch ‘old-fashioned’ television, but for new devices this will be less and less emphasized. The fact that this device doesn’t have a tuner already shows that. Eventually we’ll hand such screens on the wall and we’ll have the feeling that there’s a hole in that shows us a different, usually nonexistent, space.

This sphere is completely interactive: it responds to the heat of the hands of one or more people. It's a research project by Microsoft named Sphere.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

We get more and more screens surrounding us. Big, small, round, square, triangular, chewable, tapeable, origami proof and more silliness like that. All screens will, however, be completely interactive: respond to voice, to images, to sounds, to touch. But actually those screens only function as an interface to something else: the virtual world of brands. It’ll be the challenge to shape these in such a way that they can handle all these types of screens.

Related trends

• 2020-2035: Mediacompletion

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.

Related trends

• More freedom

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

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.

With Kupuk it's possible to control your music system using your iPhone. This is because it creates a link between phones and music systems that could turn out to become very popular.
A Sonos music system (Dutch) is a special audio system that fills the missing link between files on the hard drive, internet radio and the speakers in the various rooms of the house. The core of the system is comprised of one or more 'zone players' which are wirelessly connected to one another. Then you can control each zone with a so-called 'controller. (I've such a system myself and it works great!) Now it's also possible to control the whole system with a 'normal' iPhone.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

All screens will be connected to one another and give you access to all information wherever you want it. In this case, for example, you turn your music on using the computer, turn up the volume with your controller and will turn it off with your iPhone when you walk out the door. And that’s only the beginning. Soon we’ll also be able to use the TV, mirrors or e-readers to control our music: each screen is connected to the virtual world and reacts to our finger movements. After that we only have to say which music we want to hear and after that the digital troubadour will feel exactly what we want. This is a step in that direction.

Related trends

• 2020-2035: Mediacompletion

On Stormpulse it's possible to track hurricanes. It's possible to see the current situation, access all sorts of data, go back in time, find comparable hurricanes or look at photos.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

We’re mapping the physical world into the greatest possible detail. Now, in the past and in the predicted future. In that world we can go wherever we want to go and interact with brands like it’s the most normal thing on earth. The creation of this world is seen in examples like this.

Related trends

• 2020-2035: Mediacompletion

Picasa, Google's photo site, now recognizes faces. If you add names to faces, Picasa will start to recognize patterns. If you add more photos, Picasa will start to suggest tags.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Picasa is a brand that lets you relive the past. Just like all the other brands that mean something to us, they also know our friends. Currently we have to tell them, but soon they’ll know so many people that they can recognize people purely based on our contact list. Maybe it’ll turn out that we’re in a picture with someone we haven’t seen for fifteen years and wouldn’t even recognize anymore. And then the live-interpretation will follow: we’ll be walking on the street, then brands will help us recognize people immediately. We’ll just hear it in our (invisible) ear piece. Never again ‘who was that again?’ And so we’re taking a step closer to the future every day.

Related trends

• Brand-dialogue

Japan uses QR codes to deduce the origin of food products. This allows you to determine where food comes from and whether it comes from somewhere safe and healthy. By checking the QR codes with a suitable reader you're led to a website which tells you the product's story. From origin to the way of growing the food to the shelf it's on at the moment.

With Photosynth users can now create their own 3D images. The principle is simple: you take a lot of pictures of, for example, a building. You walk around it and takes pictures from several angles. And you also make a lot of photos with a smaller detail. You can upload the photos, Photosynth analyses them and in a few minutes has made a 3D image that you can fly through.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

People think in 3D. The virtual world will be completely 3D. And the conversion we’re making now is converting the temporarily captured 2D image of the reality we perceive (call it a photo) into a 3D image. Soon we won’t take pictures anymore, but will be registering things continuously, the ‘devices’ around us will do this. By combining them with the pictures of others we can go back in time in great detail.

What would happen when at a pop concert everyone’s running a camera and a microphone? You could relive the entire concert, relisten to every conversation from every possible angle (ignoring for a moment the possible consequences regarding privacy). That’s the nostalgic human to a tee.

What’s more you can manipulate this world and add people who weren’t there or replace people with others. This turns the past into a playground in which we can’t even recall what that past really looked like. And it won’t matter. As long as we’re happy.

Related trends

• More 3D

With TinEye, a new search engine, people can use a picture to look for similar ones. Useful if you're looking for a pretty version of something. After uploading a photo, TinEye gets to work. It can also help photographers track their work on the internet. It's still a beta-version, but on the site you can find a few cool examples.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

The virtual world is connecting more and more effectively with the visual human, the human that thinks in images. Soon we’ll be able to point at something on the street and shout ‘I like that!’. A brand that’s supporting you will immediately start to think along with you, recognize the object you’re pointing at and retrieve information from the past and present about it. Perhaps it’ll even be able to buy it for you. Not just in western countries, but especially in countries where people have never learned to read this’ll be a big thing. This future keeps getting closer.

This screen acts like a normal mirror, until you stand in front of it a little longer. Then your reflection will slowly disappear.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

The virtual world is more and more a 3D reflection of the real world. Sometimes even literally. We’ll see what we want to see. Currently as a joke, but soon we’ll look better in the mirror, to make us feel good, we’ll get dressing tips or someone could caress us virtually, a feeling that’ll really touch us. This scene is coming closer and closer.

This new photo frame by Kodak is connected to Flickr through a wireless home network. It automatically shows you the newest photos on your own photostream, of those of someone else if they register on your photos (and if they're public). You can also look up the news, weather and sports through the touch screen. Obviously you can also play videos. Other than that, the frame fronts can be replaced by something more suited to one's own interior.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Photo frames are slowly becoming completely screens connected to the virtual world that’s beginning to emerge. We’ve already got contact with the weather, sports and news brands. And that too is what brands will have to take into account, that they’ll be contacted from small threadbare touch-screens in one’s home. Beyond that it’s waiting for the next development in the photo-industry: that if we make a picture, it’ll be published online automatically (and also back-upped) and linked to other people who are taking a picture in the same spot at the same moment.