The shift to digital life on demand

Technology has changed the way that we consume content and created a generational gap in how we communicate with each other; millennials are about bite size snacking, wanting to switch context and pick up where they left off quickly; either technology is breeding the ultimate multitaskers or it’s paving the way to ADHD going digital, we are demanding more, and we expect to get it on demand.

Mobile technology has been a huge contributor to change with advances in portability, performance, features and software; these serve to both distract us and to enable much of our lives on the move but we can’t forget that it wasn’t mobile itself but the revolution of data that really helped us break mobile out of the confines of calls, texts and one line green and black displays.

Evolving over the last 20 years, digital cellular networks have transformed into a mobile broadband service that in some regions now shame the wired connectivity available; in parallel to this the rise of cloud based storage services has begun the transition away from us needing large local storage for our personal data.

Consumer electronics have kept pace with innovations, enabling users to consume content from devices of any shape / size / input mechanism they choose; brands and marketers are now challenged with providing content in a rapidly growing number of formats if they want to stay relevant.

That’s all old news though, so what’s next? A major landmark in the way that we use technology is coming that will not only revolutionise the way we look at devices but also convert us from consumers into interactors and producers.

Devices will be dumb

The entire technology consumer goods industry races towards innovation but wastes a lot of time in one-upmanship, always aiming to dazzle consumers with the latest and fastest processors, larger and higher resolution screens, it’s all more, more, more.

Clearly modern devices are not dumb: now smothered liberally in sensors, our devices know where we are, what our heart rate is and where we last left our keys. These make them (and us) smart but the pattern of needing more powerful devices is pointless.

There is a revolution happening and the gaming industry is at the forefront; in an industry that specialises in creating amazing visual experiences to bridge the gap between our reality and alternative realities, the available technology has always restricted experiences to those that have access to the highest spec gaming machines.

The major players in gaming have made huge investments to break this pattern, looking to streaming technology that will allow gamers on lower end devices to gain access to the premium experience the way it was intended.

Sony were first up with their acquisition of Gaikai which led to the launch of the PlayStation Now game streaming service, allowing gamers to beam content to supported mobile, tablet and gaming devices. Microsoft followed, announcing that Windows 10 (both PC and tablet) will be able to stream XBox One game content.

Elsewhere you can see a similar pattern with the emergence of smaller and less powerful devices like Google Chromecast, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV — essentially dumb boxes or sticks that plug into our HDTVs, remotely controlled from our mobile devices and able to stream high quality content from the cloud.

We are now bandwidth rich enough that we can stream all the content we need; we don’t need powerful devices when all the processing can be handled elsewhere on powerful servers in the cloud and all we as consumers need is a slightly-dumb but well-enabled device to receive the content and interact with it.

Everything will centralise

For those of us with blind trust in privacy policies, our personal data is already in the cloud; if we look at Google — they know practically everything there is to know about us, provide the tools we use to work and before long they will be driving us from A to B in automated vehicles and recommending booster shots based on our health readings.

Data in the cloud is a good start but on it’s own is a flawed experience; most users often move between devices and each time it’s likely that we aren’t easily able to resume where we left off, sometimes we have to set everything up again the way that we like before we can be productive.

Everyday software no longer needs to be installed on our devices for us to use it, with the browser now the common way for us to access many common applications, this has provided another step towards centralising everything and becoming more portable.

The missing piece is for the operating system itself to move into the cloud; this would make our entire personal digital experience portable, by taking our settings, our apps, our data, our last context of use, and then unlocking access to unlimited computing power regardless of the specifications of our personal devices.

Many have mocked Google for the Chromebook and are currently parodying Apple for the newly launched ‘one USB port’ Macbook, seeing these moves only as bringing a range of underpowered netbooks to the market; in the context of creating a portable user experience though, focusing on purpose built devices with a lightweight operating system, software as a service and reliance on data held in the cloud puts them ahead of their time.

Consumers will pay for what they need, when they need it

When we have beautiful lightweight devices in combination with unlimited storage and processing power in the cloud, large up-front costs become less favourable and instead the scalable pricing models that have been used in the enterprise space for cloud hosting services like Amazon and Microsoft could be translated for consumers.

Light content consumers that stay in touch with friends and family, manage personal affairs and indulge in a bit of light gaming relief don’t require much in the way of storage or processing power — a low basic subscription fee could cover the essentials as well as all the latest software updates.

Advanced users want to interact, to produce, play ultra-realistic games, design and model, work with large data sets and experiment. These activities are more demanding on both storage and processing power required and that’s where we are likely to see dynamic payments for additional units of storage or to burst processing power come into effect.

Infrastructure providers won’t move fast enough

It’s likely that the major technology companies have roadmaps towards this future vision, with some pieces of the puzzle already in place but progress will be slow.

As we have moved towards a culture of streaming content rather than owning local content, internet service providers have needed greater capacity to provide for both our wired and wireless connectivity.

We’ve already seen the impact that the enormous popularity of Netflix had on internet service providers; their initial (and defensive) reaction was to suggest that Netflix or their users should have to pay higher rates for domination of the networks rather than to adjust to the new demand. Thankfully the net neutrality movement continues to battle against such backwards thinking.

In some towns, cities or countries upgrading infrastructure services to provide super fast connectivity comes at a huge cost and impact to other key services to upgrade, there is often very little incentive to get permits and dig up roads when you can squeeze existing infrastructure to its limits at the cost of a few unhappy customers.

This has created an opening for technology companies to disrupt the infrastructure industry itself and once again Google has taken the lead by offering it’s own super fast internet service that has already rolled out to residents in seven US cities and counting.

Interestingly Google’s future looking service comes with a mandatory public WiFi component meaning that not only the subscribing customer gets super fast internet but that they slowly create a blanket of high speed wireless coverage in local area.

I personally can’t help but love how perfectly they summarise their purpose:

“A better network enhances opportunities to connect with the things we love” — Google Fiber

Unfortunately there are very few companies that have the financial or political power to be as disruptive as Google have been in this space and as Google already has established offers for cloud storage, software as a service, operating systems and now internet connectivity, they are probably the closest to having all the pieces of the puzzle.

The future is bright and full of possibilities, the future is on demand.