I've just spent the last 6.17 mins watching what Microsoft sees as the future. It wasn't until ShesConnected Conference that I really gave any thought of where companies would get their ideas to move forward with new technology. When I got to watch Sheryl Connelly discuss her work in Global Consumer Trends and Futuring for Ford Motor Company, I was finally able to get a proper picture of how companies work on getting that next “good idea” to wow their consumers and make it into the next level of technological advancement.
You see, I'm a Trekkie, and I possibly have this misconception that my fellow fans of Trek just go to work and bend their bosses rubber arms until their ideas are put to the test. There's just so much that you find in futurist story telling that usually winds up as a reality decades (or even nearly a century) later, it wasn't that difficult to come up with this concept of how tech is built. Hand-held Communicators turned into cell phones, Tricorders are today's MRI Scanners (though we're still working on the size of 'em), PADDs of Trek are our iPads and other tablets… the list almost seems endless. And a lot of the nerds that made this tech were trek geeks to boot.
It's one of those 1 + 1 does not equal 2, and is there any wonder why I was so bad at math…
Did you know that one of the (if not THE) very first mention of the Internet as we know it was discussed as part of a short story in 1909? Anyone who loves this massive creature known as the world-wide-web should take a few moments out of their life and read what E.M. Forster had dreamt about back then, in the beloved short story, “The Machine Stops”. I am SO HAPPY that I live in this era instead of dreaming of such technology a hundred years ago.
So Microsoft has a dream.
Microsoft's Productivity Future Vision (2011)
What are your thoughts of it? Is it too fantastical for your tastes? A bit of a horror/thriller?
I couldn't help but notice how *clean* everything is. Even the windows on the taxi… smudgless windows. That may be too much sci-fi for me.