The Digital Big Bang

11Apr09

As we look a couple of years out one tremor looks certain: the digital big bang. The point at which the very tipping nature of connected networks explodes us into a new dawn. Today there are 3.5 billion mobile phone users each connected to one network or another – in cities across the globe nearly all 3G. There are 2 billion TV viewers, waiting for the connected TV. There are 1.5 billion PC Internet users increasingly tethered via broadband. There are tens of millions of cars connected via GPS. Tens of millions of new generation games console addicts and over a hundred million iPod users glued to iTunes. You get the picture.

As broadband seeps across each of these connected points and connected devices a tipping point of interconnectivity will occur. Sometime between 2010 and 2012. Software will no long focus on device-centric or point-to-point applications, but instead focus on inter-connectivity, leveraging the combined intelligence of all of our devices.

Wi-Fi, power and media hubs will connect anything that comes into contact with the home network, your personal (mobile) network or transport network (car or plane). Software will finally run anywhere and everywhere. Google Apps and MobileMe are today’s raw pioneers. The breakthrough will come when the network and network based software predicts the information and applications that we will need and make them automatically appear on the nearest available screen. Tuscan recipe’s launched to my phone when I holiday in Italy. Tagged images squirted to my laptop as I blog on the move.

The combination of unlimited, universally available broadband, neural networks, data-driven network apps, GPS and totally connected devices will suddenly unleash the next generation of endlessly tethered systems – right out to wearable computing. In my glasses, my watch, purse, jacket pocket and beyond. Each enabling me to become that free-lance road warrior we have so long heard about.

The very nature of software development and packaging will finally alter. Software as a service will become software as atom, waiting to find its place in the digital, molecular minefield of mass-market, any-app-you-can-ever-imagine universe. Everything will integrate and large software vendors and universal software suites will get attacked from all sides by shoals of mini-apps combining seamlessly to take them down. Inter-locked like lego pieces. Find something new you prefer – just switch the old piece (app) out.

And once hundreds of millions of PC’s will truly inter-connect with hundreds of millions of iPhones, Android devices, Blackberry’s or Windows Mobile devices – then tens of millions of PC’s and phones will in turn connect to intelligent TV’s, games consoles or cars and the tipping point will be reached – by 2012. Altering the way we work, live, socialize and adapt.

Health checks will happen at terminals, not in a doctors surgery. Movies will be watched anywhere, paused and played from one device to another. Music will never leave your ear, always on demand. News will become the ultimate commodity – media companies only making money from its vital interpretation, never again its dissemination. Print will dry up.

People will meet online, network online, communicate online. Families will share Sunday video conference sessions not lunch. All content will mash together presented to you as you need it and not anyone else. The mobile phone will become the universal remote control for our lives. Music will appear from power sockets in our homes, not clunky speakers. All data will effortlessly converge to give us mash-ups of perfect information and media right when we need it – sometimes even before we thought we needed it.

Start-ups will require nothing other than good ideas, drive and great marketing. Capital costs for almost any new venture will be zero. Software, media, publishing, healthcare, energy, services and all intellectual property oriented businesses (which will be more than 80% of all future start-ups) will incubate in garages and kitchen tables – with set-up costs of a few hundred dollars. Democracy will finally come to the venture universe. Cash will drive growth again – not venture investors. Fund managers, bank, VC’s and private equity firms that do not provide considerable value add (way beyond what they imagine today) will become disintermediated. Stock exchanges, art auction houses and digital exchanges will gain greater power and serve the consumer more directly. Hedge Funds will become tomorrows investment banks.

The cost of developing businesses will implode as all marketing goes online and becomes increasingly intelligent and vastly more cost efficient. Ultimately marketing tools will only charge you when you win a customer or key customer behavior and never before. Micro-payments will be the currency of commerce throughout the globe and banks will have to learn service – for those worth backing. Technology will become simplified to the point where anyone will be able to write any software or service – no engineering skills whatsoever will be necessary – just design skills; designing the next concept, business, product, charity, service or lifestyle alternative.

Organizations will regroup – large organizations will regroup around cell based structures and small organizations will compete with large ones as massive shoals of tethered fish attacking the corporate sharks. Size will no longer matter in the connected universe. As such the world order will shift and the concept of super-power will no longer be relevant. Conglomerates of power will dictate – true conglomerates of work, trade, currency and politics. The EU will be the new model and one that will be replicated in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, South America and beyond – leaving the US, China and Russia as rare, independent objects.

The design-driven revolution will take over product development and launch – even businesses as we know them, Fashion, media and the arts. The design-driven revolution will converge arts and media with fashion and architecture. The employee of tomorrow will be designer more than anything else. By 2020 one third of the worlds work force will be designers. Content will finally be king and the original content creator king maker. Artists will find their true worth – if they can lift their game to become creator and marketer. And knowledge will be everything.

Analogue will go the way of the dinosaur and culture will be digital. Digital in creation, consumption and dissemination. Government will follow people and people will have power. Every facet of our lives will change and society will forever be marked by pre and post digital big bang – the ultimate line in the sand. A universe altered for ever. The Internet our single new reality. Change the only mantra.

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