1. Public spaces
Increasing numbers of commercial units are boarded up as small businesses and some high street stores scale back or close down. Those businesses that can move to an entirely online selling model (electronics and phone shops, for eg) won't see much incentive to re-open their stores. This leaves a lot of valuable physical space available, and if landlords take the view that some (cheap) occupancy is better than none, I wonder what will fill it. We've been seeing pop-up galleries, restaurants, shops, cinemas etc in London for a while. I wonder when/if they're about to move out of the cities. I also wonder what else might fill these spaces, and how this will change our high streets.
Tie this to...
2. Real world as a platform
Location-based services as elements of cross-platform projects. So that participating will include going to real places, or fake places in real locations. Checking into story locations in the real-world to pick up tips/updates/extra material. Overlaying real locations with fake/imaginary worlds that you can visit. Can you check into Argleton on Foursquare? (Oh I do hope so.) Get Excited and Go Somewhere ;)
3. Unsolved problems
That filtering problem is getting worse. This may be a purely personal perspective, but I'm starting to crave quiet, and don't even talk to me about Inbox Zero. I don't have a solution, just the observation.
4. Social utilities
Matt touched on this too. A technology has become mainstream when it is practically invisible. Email and SMS have done it. As social networks, and Facebook in particular, become the means of logging in to increasing numbers of services what will this mean for people's online experiences? What will it unlock? Who will it leave behind?
5. Yorkshire puddings
I'm hungry.
Oh ok: 5. Manners
This is the wooliest of the lot, but in a nutshell: Facebook's terrible privacy settings brought personal privacy issues into the mainstream, and to the attention of a lot of people who had never considered it til now. They're sensitive to it now, and also sensitive to the realisation that they don't have the tech know-how to untangle a site's privacy workings. They're suspicious - a lot of trust has been lost. As Facebook becomes the means of logging into/accessing sites and services, those sites and services are going to have to be visibly careful with what they access and how. Asking permission, being clear about why/what for etc. No one reads a privacy policy or FAQ, this information will be conveyed by social codes about what is and isn't acceptable. Some of them we already know, some of them will evolve as social mores do, and with them will evolve the language to communicate around them.
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