The document discusses the growing trend of connectivity and the Internet of Things, predicting that there will be 50 billion connected devices by 2020. It outlines four areas that will be impacted by increased connectivity: connected individuals through devices like smartwatches and glasses, connected homes using devices like smart home systems, connected travel with services like bike sharing and driverless cars, and connected health with technologies that monitor health. While greater connectivity provides benefits like access to more information and services, it also presents challenges regarding privacy, control of personal data, and how people interact socially with technologies. Content creators should consider how to add value to user experiences through connected devices while respecting customer data and preferences.
3. Moving from connected devices to a networked society
Source: Ericsson, More than 50 Billion Connected Devices
4. The pay off
Improved access to information and
services
Reduced cost and improved efficiency
=
Increased choice and improved lifestyle for
individuals
Increased opportunities for business
25. 1. Understand which devices your
audience are starting to use and why
2. Think about how content further add
value to the user experience and make it
richer without being annoying
3. Be respectful of customer data and put
them in control
4. Watch this space
26. Thank you.
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Robin.Bonn@seven.co.uk
Editor's Notes
Of course if we are talking about pushing the boundaries, as usual, we need to talk about Google and their driverless car which is already gathering fame.
From May this year, they announced this new prototype, which they built from scratch, which has no steering wheel or brake or accelerator pedals, but an override system.
Google’s aim – beyond getting into new markets and making huge amounts of money - is to improve road safety by overcoming the most dangerous part of driving – drivers - as human error is responsible for over 90% of accidents. In the states, more people under 35 die from deaths on the road than cancer. Using sensors around the car to see 360 degrees around – no more blind spots and seeing 2 football fields away, the data delivered along with 3D mapping, tells the car how to deal with different obstacles and situations- be it cyclists or road blocks. It also uses mapping technology to get you to your destination.
Health is an exciting area of development for internet of things and is expected to have a lot of positive outcomes, not just in monitoring health but eventually in helping diagnose and treat it.
Peek vision is one such device which attaches to the back of a smartphone and helps tackle blindness in remote parts of the world. 40m people worldwide are blind – usually in the world’s poorest countries - and 80% is avoidable. This portable eye examination kit gives comprehensive eye examinations that are able to look into the eye itself and then diagnose conditions like cataracts that can cause blindness and are treatable. All at the fraction of the price of the expensive equipment eye clinics would use and can be used by local health workers .
Another example of a piece of connected technology which is really enabling is Enable Talk.
This project, which won 1st prize in the Microsoft Imagine competitions by some Ukrainian students, who had observed the difficulties that deaf people in their class had with communication. The gloves have sensors in them that recognise movement and the positions of the hands and can translate those signs to speech, enabling them to communicate and connect to those around.
So it all sounds very poisitve and exciting but there are 3 challenges or barriers to tackle with this move to become a more connected society
There is a worry with the huge amount of data that will be gathered, who will control it and how do we know it won’t be used for bad purposes. At the worst extreme you come out at George Orwell’s 1984. There is already a lot of paranoia about the extent to which companies like Facebook and Google know a lot about it. The law isn’t keeping up with the fast developments in technology.
And it’s not just governments and corporations we need to worry about, there is concern too that we may be more open to hacking with all the additional data being created.
Linked to this is loss of control. By machines becoming smarter, will we stop being able to make decisions?
“Positive things may be tempered by a growing reliance on outsourcing to technologies that make decisions not based on human concerns but instead on algorithms (however influenced by our past choices). We may begin to lose sight of our own desires or our own wills… What will happen to our own sense of intuition, let alone our capacity to venture into the unknown, learn new things, and our ability to be still and quiet without being in constant relationship to one device or other.” Aaron Black, author of the Psychodynamics of social networking
And on a lighter note, there’s social etiquiette.
You may have heard the term Google Glasshole which the Urban Dictionary defines as a person who constantly talks to their Google Glass, ignoring the outside world.
Google is so keen to ensure that there arent’ societal barriers to their technology adoption that they have published a manual for those wearing Glass with the first instruction - Don’t Be creepy or rude (aka, a “Glasshole”).
Currently some restaurants in the states are banning Glass wearers for freaking out other dinners.
Doc Searls, from the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society expects it will take 5 years for manners friendly systems and the protocols that go with them to be be developed
So what does all this mean for content? At the moment it’s early days.
But what we can be sure of is more devices = more opportunities to connect and engage with our audiences.
This will be the future so it is important that we start getting in on this early and understanding the user and user experience.
For a more connected society, content needs to ensure it is even more razor focused on understanding and delivering on user needs in the different occasions
Understand the needs and occasions those devices are delivering against
This is important as these devices will be used to make life simpler and more efficient – content if it is wrongly judged, could do the opposite. As usual, this comes down to user insight.
Don’t be creepy at the expense of being clever.
It’s about trying things and testing and watching the market