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MegaTrends in Interactive Information Technology

Within the next few years, hundreds of interactive technologies will emerge. Which ones will become commercially successful and popular? A key task for executives and decision makers will be to sort out all these technologies and determine which markets to go after, which information products to develop, and which alliances to form.

Seven basic technology megatrends will influence everything related to information flow and usage: digital, interactive, integrated, networked, object-oriented, portable and multimedia to virtual reality. These megtrends inevitably enable I3 concepts that will come much sooner than many think.

What Is it? Just as technology was the key enabler of the Industrial Revolution, so is information technology the key enabler of the Information Revolution.

Every day brings yet another story about another technological breakthrough that will change our everyday lives. And that's just if you read the general interest magazines. Read the technical journals and you're inundated with dozens of reports of new technologies each week.

Where is all this technology going? Is it real, will it last, how do we sort it all out?

We believe that most of the technologies being introduced are real, will last, and will have a very profound effect on our lives. The key thing to do is to be able to sort them out, make sense of how they will work together, and how they relate to each other ... do they obviate, or perhaps augment each other?

The concept of information technology as an enabler is critical to the decisions faced by companies today in the information industry. We believe that even if you decide on just a handful of core technologies to target, you need to be aware of the hundreds of other technologies that will gradually impact the core set of technologies you have chosen to focus on. (See the InfoTIPS Timeline below for just a small sampling of the myriad of technologies to be explored.)

To simplify things, we've boiled down the hundreds of emerging technologies to seven key areas, or trends, in information technology. These will affect everything from telephone, fax, delivery services, banking and photography, to newspapers, movie/TV/film industries, and even government and education. Keep in mind that this is only a brief introduction to the seven trends. We'll have much more to say about each of these in future issues of CyberMedia 2001.

Digital: A large portion of our world of information will be digitized over the next several years. This will happen simply because digital media is faster, cheaper, and easier to store and transport; it's economically inevitable! As the information is digitized, it becomes more available, useful and valuable. It can be replicated, modified, re-used, distributed and/or queried at almost no incremental cost.

Integrated: Information,Products and Services will become more and better integrated over time. Along with this integration, i.e. separate things working together, we will see the rise of more and more multi-function products and services. Companies will need to integrate and streamline their corporate databases and communication systems, enhancing efficiency and communication.

Interactive: It's no use having integrated, digitized information unless you can interact with it in a productive way. Static, one-way information will give way quickly to information that can be personalized, customized, queried, sorted, searched, edited and condensed. We'll see systems that provide a reasonable set of rules for interacting with all forms of information. And we'll see simple interfaces that make it easy to access information quickly, intelligently and "automagically."

Networked: Much of the world's information will be networked. There will not be a single, global, homogenous network, but there will be a standard system for uniting hundreds, if not thousands, of networks across the globe. Today's Internet and Worldwide Web are just the beginning...just as "the internet" is an meta-level bridging of computer networks, eventually there will be cross-network linkages between data, video and audio networks, between various phone, broadcast TV, cable TV, radio, satellite networks. Networks will have a universal addressing system, so that to the user it appears that there is a single, homogenous network.

Object-Oriented: Although we've borrowed this term from the world of software programming, we use it not in a strict OOPS programming sense. Virtually everything on the network will appear as an object to everything else, will be able to pass on information about themselves to other objects. Workstations, PCs, CDs, and even users will appear as objects. The OOPs concepts of primitives, inheritance, classes, libraries, and reusability will apply to how things interact on the network, enhancing efficiency and stability. It will allowing for adaptive, intelligent cybermedia using agents for navigation, searching and negotiation.

Portable: Portability doesn't just mean small, lightweight, and battery-powered, it also means portability across platforms. Data, files, formats and protocols will be interoperable and scalable across disparate networks, systems and devices. This is key to ensuring that all of the vast world of content out there becomes accessible via many different devices. Properly designed content should be equally accessible by anybody, anytime, anywhere and anyhow.

Multimedia to Virtual Reality: MM->VR is a general trend that affects not only the presentation of information, but the data formats and interface as well. In the near future, all interactive content will be TV-like with text, graphics, overlays, animations, video and audio. The fidelity/quality/resolution of presentation will attempt to duplicate our real, analog world. VR interfaces with avatars and the ability to recognize speech and gestures eventually become common. Since the Real World already consists of simultaneous multisensory datatypes, today's feeble multimedia is the first step toward full-fledged VR interfaces.

The picture we paint here is admittedly somewhat of a fantasy world. But it is a very probable world, one that springs from a shared vision of the future.

We confirmed this vision with our Delphi survey with over 80 key leaders/ executives from a broad range of fields (academia, publishing, computers, telecom, television, and motion pictures). What we discovered was a stunningly cohesive response to: "How do you envision the future world of information technology?"

Our "thought leaders" described a world where computers will be ubiquitous, will have microphones everywhere, and we'll simply talk to request what we need. The computer will respond to our questions, ask us for more information if needed, locate what we need wherever it is on the network, analyze it and present the answers in a multimedia way. The computer will be where we need it, when we need it, and we will converse with it as if talking with a personal assistant.

The interesting thing is that this vision of the future seems to have not really evolved under the control of the technology experts. It has grown more as a result of images created by science fiction writers and the movie producers and screen writers in Hollywood. They have played a tremendously important role in shaping our thoughts about what the future will bring. They imply and assume all of the above MegaTrends. Everyone in the general public has seen 2001, Star Trek, or Star Wars and knows how we will interact with computers in the future.

We at The CyberMedia Group believe that this "fantasy" world will become reality much faster than anyone thinks. Sure, the "information highway" has been much criticized in this past year, to the point that it has become almost fashionable to poke fun at it. Especially after the failure of one ill-conceived merger (the TCI/Bell Atlantic deal in early ë94) and the delay of Time/Warner's launch of their "Full Service Network" in Orlando, FL, skeptics have thrown potshots. Unfortunately, the attention given to these two events prompted a turning point that caused many people to backtrack on the whole concept of the information highway.

But we strongly believe that, in fact, these types of interactive information products and services are inevitable. (The MegaTrends guarantee it!) They will begin testing in the next few years, and they will become commercially popular and successful in the next six years. We think that these ideas will become reality for millions of people by 2001.

There's too much going on! Too many technologies coming down the info-pike. No one company can do it all, and no one can do it alone. Therefore:

• know yourself and your core technologies
  
• clearly understand how your company fits into the I3
  
• pick the key technologies you want to focus on, but understand how other technologies augment or obviate yours
  
• know your weaknesses, holes, and gaps
  
• build alliances to cover your weaknessesódon't look for strength-to-strength
  
• invest in smaller companies with key technologies, content or brands