Digital lives trends - April 2010

PREAMBULE This trend book about digital behaviours has emerged from presonnal thinking, based on reading, observations and findings on the web during the past year.

This trend book aims to identify, explain and illustrate the main trends that are shaping the world of digital behaviours.

In this exercice, I have limited myself to the perimeter of behaviours I know about, i.e. those happening in the western countries.

Beside the fact that these trends are here illustrated within the context of digital behaviours, they are not restricted to this context.

A finite world

USA's consumption footprint

is 12.2 ha/person, In Ethiopia the

figure is 2ha

source : WWF UK

Between 1970 and 2002 forest cover has dwindled

by 12%

source : The Guardians

16 119

endangered species in 2006

source : IUCN

End of oil ressources

around 2050

source : Terresacree.org

A finite world

A finite world

More than the physical limits of the globe, instantaneous communication provides a panoptic view of the world and reveals the boundaries.

« Speed is the greatest factor of emprisonment. » P. Virilio

Data is at the core

Data is at the core

Google alone has already indexed

over 8 billion pages and

over10 million books and add 1,5 to 2 millions new publications

each year.

Within our finite sphere, the digital revolution, that has started 20

years ago, has rapidly increased

inter-connections and inter-dependencies

between actors and contributes to develop an immaterial economy.

Rather than disqualifying the capitalist system, the sub-prime crisis is

more relevant as a symbol of the

effects of the growing immaterial economy

over reality.

Data is at the core

The ongoing

indexation of existing knowledges and objects increases even

more the weight of data and their effects over reality.

« These new technologies try to make virtual reality more powerful than actual reality, which is the true accident. The day when virtual reality becomes more powerful than reality will be the day of the big accident. Mankind never experienced such an extraordinary accident. » P. Virilio

Data is at the core

Renchanted matter

One of the main outcome of the last crisis is a

collective understanding that our environment

is escaping us.

«Except scientific people, nobody really

understand the objects we use ; (...) we just ‘count’ on

them. On the other side, the savage knows incomparably

better his own tools.» M. Weber about

‘disenchantment’, In Politic as a vocation

Renchanted matter

and this almost for free for the

end user.

Even if the ongoing digital

indexation clearly continues the

disenchantment of the world, data have

great values.

Data are

potentially unalterable

accessible from

everywhere

at any time

Material

Magical powers

Vaudoo powers

Spiritual effects

Other beliefs

MATTER principle of disenchantment

...

Services

Know-ledge

Identity

Data

principle of re-enchantment MATTER

And matter remains the body of interaction

with data

Data are the core of an infinite added

value

So, if the world is running out

of raw matter

VISION : Matter is tangible data.MISSION : In a world animated by data,

data will be visible by eyes and editable by hands.

BLACK OUT

Dwellers’ guide

IMMUNITY GOODS Ghost in a wall

SMALL PRODUCERS inc. Data body language

Invisible man’sparadoxRaw charm ∞1

-

+

Matter

TRENDS

BLACK OUT

Target : Web addicted teenagers

Vision of apocalypse

Theory of western civilisations’ collapse

Fear of a multipolar world

Major economic system failure«We are the collateral victims

of the progress.» P. Virilio

Newspaper blackout

Since the 2008 economical crisis, the capitalist model has lost part of its legitimacy.While western civilisation is as fragile as an empty shell, some fears the accident.

is young Alice without her connectionWho

As people’s life record moves now online, the computer screen has become the Alice’s mirror.A potential black out would make anyone amnesic, with no access to his/her memory.

cannot be foreseen is the black out Poetry is « what happened »

«Accident» means «what is coming», and there is no way to prevent things of coming.To avoid immaterial memories to be cutted off, we need tracks of events in shape-memory material.

Plaid memoire

Imagine a peripheric device connected to your computer that would print out your digital life biorythm and produce a piece of cloth

from which to read your personal history as you would browse a photo album or a biography.

IMMUNITY GOODS

Target : Perfection seekers

Personal data monitoring

Safety scanner

Myth of the perfect body

Permanent surveillance

Homeland purity Holy protection

In the western world, geopolitical and sanitarian threats are in everyone’s mind. Consumption has become a weapon to lead a holy patriotic fight.

Heroic story Daily life superpower

While digital world grows, frontiers between fiction and reality blurs each day a bit more. Thus, eachone seeks to build oneself ’s self defense.

Immunity prothesis ADN compatible goods

When environment becomes too complex to remain safe, stakes are to avoid what may harm one’s self. In other words, the stake is now to extand one’s immune system to identify what ensure one’s identity.

Scanning second skin

Imagine a device as a prosthesis that knows you and scans the goods that surround you, in order to help you make the right choice

according to your immune system, your allergies, your ideological engagement, your feelings of the day, ...

GHOST IN THE WALL

Target : Urban editors

Information noise Nature driven as a factory

Designing co-existenceHuman nature to urban nature

City pulse Living signal

More than half of the world population now lives in condensed urban environment.Visualizing the activity of city dwellers in live becomes a key issue to live in the real time city.

Moving perspectiveUrban specimen

One’s moves, one’s actions, one’s interactions feeds a live and collective database about trafic.But without a proper interface, these cities of data remain only stories, invisible cities.

Figurative bodies Sensitive cities

For a city to be smart, all citizens ought to be taken into account as an agent of the system.The stake of 5th screen is to make city pulse tangible on its walls, readable and editable by itself.

Urban semaphore

Imagine to be able to interact with the walls, to shape the urban public space. Not like an architect or a designer who would create something new and specific. But like the wind blows into the leaves

of a tree, your presence, your movements, your speed or the amount of data you carry with you would blow onto the façades of

the city and become one of the ghost of the city.

The invisible man’s paradox

Target : Broadcasted netizens

Droit à l’oubli

Privacy paradox

«Don’t tag me in this photo»

Multi-identity

Transparency

Ubiquity

Invisibility

Virtual worlds addiction

Personal data

Belief of invisibility Facts of exposureWhere :

The ideology of online worlds is to offer everyone the gifts of ubiquity and invisibility.But the cost of ubiquity is the sell of one’s personnal informations.

Self branding Online deathWho :

Immaterial informations now ought to be protected by anonymity, as much as real identities would.But erasing one’s online private information equals to perform an amputation of one’s personal history.

More than one identity MaskWhat :

In a self-branding attitude, each footprint one may leave online becomes a chapter of a biography.More than being invisible again, heteronomity is the key to personal identity management.

Coïdentity

Imagine a support like a business, that would allow you to introduce yourself through your upt-to-date Facebook profile, or your Likedin

profile, or any of your virtual identities made tangible.

RAW CHARM

Target : Relationship epicurians

We are animals

Cult of « faitiches » Cult of libido

Object of desire

Cult of uniqueness

Fantasy of telepathy and telekinesis remains the quest of the sixth sens for communication. But complex communication systems still fail to carry real emotions and feelings.

In the immaterial economy world, a thing is valued by the amount of times it has been shared.Crafted goods gain value because they cannot be reproduced & keep emotional bounds to their origin.

Sometimes, the smell of a perfum may provoke more emotional bounding than a phone call.Like in vaudoo incantations, any object may become a direct polysensorial remote communication tool.

Vaudoo relique

Imagine an altar on wich would be displayed things or stuffs that relatives would have offered to you. And imagine that by holding anyone tight or talk or carry, you would be able to share these

actions with the owner of the puppet.

SMALL PRODUCERS inc.

Target : Producer class

Bands funded by their fans

Open source platforms

Time square = art square

Peer to peer lending

Together we can

Flash mob Vs Fab lab

At the age of service, workers owns their production tools and have access to distribution channels. A new class of empowered citizen emerges, the producers class.

But the degre of complexity of one’s personnal production is limited by one’s mastered competences.Realizing more complex and rich features requires to gather and extend the collective ABC of 2.0.

After production & distribution, the participative economy urges the system to rethink property rights.Collective will goes beyond local and leads to find new standards for an open economy.

Crumbs economy

Imagine a place where neighbours of the world village could purchase things buy bartering to each other social units. It would

mean for instance that you could buy bread with your cell phone in return of renting minutes of your car; and a month of french bread

would mean 200 km of your car for your baker.

DATA BODY LANGUAGE

Target : Casual gamers

Pervasive connection

6th sense

Wifi cultureTactile dimension

Intuitive movement interaction

Body-data interaction

Casual gaming business grows, with new older customers and new learning/teaching practices.Quality of game is less connected to the qualitative immersive 3D than to the social interactions.

There is no more need to learn user interfaces builded upon the standards designed 30 years ago.Data now react to our own body movements instead of waiting to be activated through keyboard.

Soon, online gaming will even be freed from consoles, through direct interaction between players.After the playstation code, here comes the data body language; gestures are new keys.

Life blog choreography

Imagine than any of your movements may update your status online, or be a mean to play with a remote friends somewhere else.

DWELLERS’ GUIDES

Target : City Breakers

Zero impact way of life

Paris greaters

Solidarity economy

Global warming

Couch surfing

Slow travel

In a finite globe, traveling means looking for heterotopies ; it is first of all a state of mind.In a world full of stuffs and people, any of them is a potential ressource for the next move.

As soon as things are connected, nothing remains unreachable and everywhere becomes « inside ».Exotism relies less on a geographical distance than on the remoteness from one’s personal routines.

In a finite world, travelers are not explorers anymore, but dwellers on the move looking for stories.The world is a ruin, full of meanings and histories, that can be decoded like a record.

Tales of thing

Imagine a service attaching stories to objects, landmarks or monuments with RFiD tags. Traveling at home or abroad with your phone would allow you to read such stories on the go. Or even to

leave your own story edited in a real printed out tag.

Matter is tangible data

BLACK OUT

Dwellers’ guide

IMMUNITY GOODS Ghost in a wall

SMALL PRODUCERS inc. Data body language

Invisible man’sparadoxRaw charm

Thank you.Marc Chataigner - http://flavorsme.com/marcchataigner