I have long believed that the way we interact as humans is on an accelerating journey towards massive change. Whether the next interaction frontier involves the brain or a broad Metaverse vision, it is almost certain that how we interact will change. There have been several waves of change to our interaction paradigm through at least three stages of transformation. However, the next transformation will alter many long-standing beliefs, and as we explore possibilities, emerging scenarios can be very illuminating.
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Blasting Into A Contactless Future
“Against the backdrop of a two-century period of faster and faster transformation, the coronavirus is compressing and further accelerating the arc of events” – Steve LeVine
That quote from a recent Article via Steve LeVine captures what is happening very well. History warns us that predicting what happens post-crisis is wrought with peril. As the article states, in the 16th and 17th centuries, smallpox, measles, and other diseases brought by the Spanish wiped out up to 90% of the South and Central American population, utterly transforming the historic order. But the global flu pandemic of 1918 to 1919 appeared to establish no new norms. Mr. LeVine posits that Covid-19 appears to be a hybrid in impact — vastly speeding up some trends while dispelling others. A quote by Cliff Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group, captures it well: “Such acceleration is a natural byproduct of crises like pandemics, which tend to jolt the current system.”
How will we Interact in the Future?
In recent post on the transformation of interaction, I talked about the changing ways in which we interact with our machines and each other. These changes combine with the emergence of ecosystems to complicate the experience journey. Well, if you saw my last post on our possible future, that journey could get very complicated. I’ve expanded my original visual to incorporate three additional categories of interaction, and some of what science and technology have in store (potentially) for our interaction paradigms. Continue reading
The Experience Journey Gets Complicated
My ongoing work on emerging future scenarios has driven a renewed focus on experience. Several factors are converging to shift the experience end game; specifically, the evolution of Ecosystems and the transformation of Interaction. These two forces – themselves the result of combinatorial innovation – are converging. While the way we interact continues to shift, a parallel evolution towards ecosystems is occurring. This ecosystem evolution introduces systemic complexity and combines with a shifting interaction paradigm to alter the way we think about experience.
Figure 1: Phase One of a pending shift in interaction paradigms
Reimagining the Future 