People today are faced with the cumbersome task of dealing with disparate content on multiple screens, via multiple platforms, and through multiple profiles. The unification of experience is the great frontier for innovation in technology, user interface design, and computing. How we get there is up in the air.

The number of ‘digital’ screens we view every day and the sheer amount of diverse content we consume through those screens can feel overwhelming at times. How our experiences of those screens and the content we consume through them (more the latter, as screens may become antiquated) are brought together, consolidated and streamlined is the great frontier of innovation in technological development and user interface design, I believe.

The unification of experience is the term I’ll use to describe the unrealized ideal of a trend toward the coalescence of our experiences through those screens (though I’ll limit the discussion to ‘digital’ screens, as opposed to traditional ‘screens’ like book pages and canvases).

The screens I personally interact with regularly are: my  personal laptop, my netbook, my personal monitor, the other personal monitor/LCD my friend loaned me, my work laptop, my work monitor, various other screens I use at work (the LCDs I use on the walls of meeting rooms and the projector in the screening room), my smart phone, and the TV in my living room.

I admit, though — I probably interact with a lot more screens than the average person. Still, according to recent research by the Council for Research Excellence (recently cited by CBS), “The average American adult now spends 8-1/2 hours a day staring into screens.” That’s not an insignificant amount of time, and chances are that those interactions aren’t limited to a single screen.

The screens of our life and the content we consume through them take up varying proportions of our time, on average. An interesting infographic from Boston's AMP agency, released during MITX's first annual FutureM Conference.

As both the number of screened devices people use and the time they spend with those devices increases,  the unification of experience becomes an increasingly important idealization of a trend — and one that  the titans of media and technology are seeking to attain at an ever faster clip through varying strategies and tactics.

3 Approaches That Could Work

While there are a host of innovators aiming to attain the unification of experience  through myriad tacks, there are only a few avenues that I think are truly viable. Even these, though,  are harried by obstacles that lead me to believe it’s unlikely that any single one of these strategies will ever have the opportunity to fully succeed.

1. The Cloud, Ubiquitous Broadband & Inter-Operable Languages. Companies like VMWare, Cisco and IBM (among others) are laying the groundwork for a computing future in ‘the cloud’, while the FCC pushes policies to expand the scope and speed of broadband coverage in the United States. These trends, in tandem with development and dissemination of inter-operable computer languages, could be factors that facilitate the perfect storm of tech that would ultimately lead to (something like) the unification of experience naturally. Simply put, the cloud provides an external place where programs, content and even computing can live, while users are free to move from device to device and have similar experiences that are delivered via the internet.  Think Google Apps, but broader. The adoption of a singular inter-operable language (which is dominating certain niches of cross-platform communication — e.g., Flash vs HTML5), while less likely, would augment the cloud and broadband’s strides toward the unification of experience.
2. A Closed Ecosystem of Devices, Software & Experiences. Undoubtedly, the company most successful at executing this strategy is Apple. Their “walled apple grove” is both beautiful and verdant. Their hardware, software, virtual shopping experiences and developer community — while aggravating to many competitors and developers — has created an unparalleled attempt at taking on the unification of experience single-handed. The problem: there are competitors that are coming out with comparably awesome experiences. Their barrier for creating a similarly closed ecosystem? — They’re not as cool. Don’t count competition out, though. Companies like Samsung are going to give Apple a run for their (heaping pile of) money.
3. Cross-Platform programs that Bridge Devices and Share Content. While many of these types of programs (e.g., Google’s many online apps) reside in the cloud, there are a host of ‘hybrid’  programs (downloadable programs, online portals, mobile interfaces) that allow devices to communicate and share content among each other seamlessly and with little thought for users (other than using them). Among my favorites are Evernote and Dropbox; sadly, I have yet to see All Share (on my Samsung Epic 4G) work in action, though it seems to have a lot of potential. Less ambitious programs like Gmote are also tackling the unification of experience, though in much smaller bites.

Barriers to Unity

• Privacy, Security & Cultural Backlash: With data, content and operable capabilities flowing from device to device, it’s no wonder that attaining the unification of experience is fraught with security and privacy issues. User access, compliance with regulations and figuring out where data resides are among the many security challenges, for example, that cloud computing faces, according to Gartner Research. Google and Facebook are the most publicized villains in the ever-growing debate over online privacy. Truth be told, though, it’s a broader cultural question — with vast differences across nations — that pits one of the fastest growing areas of business (how companies wield data) against traditional cultural mores about privacy. How this will play out remains to be seen.
• A Competitive Market & Fragmented Innovation. The nature of a competitive market gives rise to the fragmentation of technological innovation (as a result of differing business models). Not every company can be Apple, but many will try their damnedest to break the efficacy of Apple’s business model and introduce disruptive innovations that prevent them and others like them from gaining too great an advantage in any one of the aforementioned strategic areas. The result is a ‘king of the hill’ approach toward playing in this space. But, if businesses can find mutual benefits from helping each other win (as many are already doing — e.g. Sony, Intel and Google with GoogleTV) we may be looking at a more unified future.

Closing Thoughts

I initially wanted to include a piece about ‘pervasive computing,’ which is, in many ways, of the same ilk of idealized trends as the unification of experience. But, for the sake of brevity (yes, I realize this post is long), I’ll leave you with a salient quote from IBM’s W.S. Ark and T. Selker:

“Part of the beauty of pervasive computing is that we will not even realize that it is here, once it has become a necessary part of our lives. In the future it will often be invisible, and the user interface will be intuitive. The other important part of the story is that it will all be networked. Data, once entered, will never have to be entered again, but will be readily available whenever and wherever needed.”

Regardless of whether unification of experience or pervasive computing is attainable, is it a reality we want? Do we really want to be that ‘jacked in’?  I leave you with this video, which one of my colleagues sent me with the note: “If this is the future, shoot me now.”

I’d love to read what you think in the comments section.

Share the Future

Observations

That our relationships with others have changed as a result of social media is a foregone conclusion.

Blurred  and Broadened Borders of Social Spheres. Social media’s initial default of openness made normal the notion that the borders of our neatly distinct social spheres of who is granted access to the content of our lives are blurred, intersected and broadened. It’s increasingly tough to draw distinctions between ‘personal’ and ‘professional,’ not to mention ‘public’ and ‘private’ social spheres. And it’s increasingly expected — as is satirized in the South Park episode below this post — that we open our lives’ contents to previously siloed participants in our lives.

Increased Social Productivity. Our ‘social productivity’ is on an upward trend. That is, we ‘interact’ with more people on a broader array of subjects in a shorter amount of time than ever before. This is more a function of   technological innovation in communications and a heightened threshold for multi-tasking — broadly speaking — than a unique effect of internet-based social media’s ubiquitous popularity. But these new media have provided a platform for sharing rich forms of content, effectively expanding the palette we use to express ourselves.

A Deeper, Different Look

Spending more social time online can result in less in-person social time. After all, there are only so many hours in the day.

Social media have certainly expanded the absolute number of human social interactions. A qualitative look at how we use these media to interact with others, however, sheds light on a somewhat ironic result: social media can actually enhance physical isolation, loneliness and detachment from others.

Socially Prolific, but Physically Isolated. While our social interactions on an binary scale have absolutely increased, being increasingly ‘jacked in’ has also resulted in a larger proportion of our ‘social’ lives being spent in physical isolation. Though we can share our lives through social media with people in-person, actually using the media is necessarily a personal, solitary experience. Our immediate interaction is with devices — our computers, smart phones and tablets — not people. Whether more prolific but less physical social relationships are preferable to the less frequent physical intimacy of yesteryear is a big conversation best saved for another day.

The social time we spend online can cause detachment from in-person relationships.

Detachment from Others. As traditionally physical interactions are increasingly superseded by virtual counterparts, the decline of our physical interactions with others has real impacts on how we relate to others. As mentioned in a previous blog entry, the interesting (though unethical) research of Harry Harlow with rhesus monkeys indicated a primal longing and need for physical contact with others. Long periods of time without physical social contact result in further withdrawal from society, a self-perpetuating cycle of loneliness. And loneliness, as you’ll soon read, can be both enhanced and spread through social media.

Social media can act as a more efficient platform for spreading the contagious effects of loneliness.

A Platform for Loneliness. Recent findings by professors at Harvard, UChicago and UCSD discovered that loneliness, like a cold, can be contagious among social networks. Involving roughly12,000 people over 60 years, the study concluded that lonely people are highly likely to share their loneliness with others, extending up to three degrees of separation (One lonely friend makes one 40 to 65 percent more likely to be lonely, a lonely friend-of-a-friend makes one 14 to 36 percent more likely, and a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend makes one 6 to 26 percent more likely, the study suggests). Says UChicago’s John Cacioppo:

“These reinforcing effects mean that our social fabric can fray at the edges, like a yarn that comes loose at the end of a crocheted sweater.”

Social media amplifies and exacerbates the spread of loneliness, providing a more efficient platform for lonely people to share their loneliness with others. Not only that — increased use of social media both increases physical isolation (see above) and provides a disheartening view into more popular people’s lives.

Social Media Success, Where In-Person Largely Fails

Social media isn’t all bad, though (duh). In fact, it produces some great results where in-person interactions often flounder. Harvard Business School professor Mikolaj Jan Piskorski astutely observes:

“Online social networks are most useful when they address real failures in the operation of offline networks.”

Among the biggest failures of in-person interaction that social media addresses are keeping up-to-date and in-touch with friends and acquaintances outside our most immediate social periphery, establishing new relationships (both professionally and personally. Interestingly, online social networks may soon become the No.1 way Americans find significant others, some experts suggest), and facilitating a passive job search. And, needless to say, it allows us to satiate our voyeuristic desires to peer into others’ lives and points-of-view, even as people are increasingly pushing their privacy thresholds back against social media’s push forward. Piskorski confirms:

“People just love to look at pictures. That’s the killer app of all online social networks. Seventy percent of all actions are related to viewing pictures or viewing other people’s profiles.”

Closing Remarks

Admittedly, this account of some of the impacts of social media on human interactions is incomplete. In particular, I never explore the impact of social media on the presentation of self in everyday life. Undoubtedly, social media have provided an elevated platform for narcissists, self-promoters and online celebrities to broadcast their lives, thoughts and points-of-view. How this affects the general consumer of social media’s sense of self and identity is best saved for another entry.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts on both that subject and the one in this post in the comments section below! Thanks for continuing to follow the blog, and apologies for not writing more. Rest assured, though, I’ve been keeping up with at least some social media, and there’ll be more to come on the  blog soon!

Share the Future

Last week’s security lapse that exposed personal Facebook chats was embarrassing for both the social media giant and its users, materializing  many’s most salient concerns about sharing private information over the social Web.

Personal lives are broadcasted across online social networks. Are young people more apt to act with indiscretion? Conventional wisdom says 'yes'; recent studies say 'no'.

The New York Times’ Laura M. Holson recently reports, however, that the tell-all generation (those between 18 and 29-years-old) is learning to keep things offline. Holson writes: 

The conventional wisdom suggests that everyone under 30 is comfortable revealing every facet of their lives online, from their favorite pizza to most frequent sexual partners. But many members of the tell-all generation are rethinking what it means to live out loud.

Young adults in their 20s, in fact, more frequently delete unwanted posts and more actively limit profile information, according to a soon-to-be released report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. This fact, the report suggests, is indicative of heightened diligence among young adults in exerting control over their digital reputations.

Says Mary Madden, lead researcher on the forthcoming Pew report:

“Social networking requires vigilance, not only in what you post, but what your friends post about you. Now you are responsible for everything.”

Recent academic research by Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society and UC Berkeley’s Center for Law and Technology attest to young adults’ online vigilance. In the UC Berkeley study, which explores how young adults differ from their elders when it comes to information privacy attitudes and policies, the sentiments are especially clear:

• 88 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds believe laws should require websites to delete their stored information;
• and 62 percent say they think laws should require that people have access to what websites know about them.

Interestingly, as Holson highlighted, this runs counter to conventional wisdom about young adults’ online behavior on social media. The Berkeley study succinctly describes the misconception, which is fueled by frequent media coverage of the risks of social networking:

“Media reports teem with stories of young people posting salacious photos online, writing about alcohol-fueled misdeeds on social networking sites, and publicizing other ill-considered escapades that may haunt them in the future. These anecdotes are interpreted as representing a generation-wide shift in attitude toward information privacy. Many commentators therefore claim that young people “are less concerned with maintaining privacy than older people are.”

According to the study, however, the apparent license with which the young behave online stems from a gap in privacy knowledge. In general, it seems, young people know very little about privacy issues:

• 42 percent of young Americans answered all five online privacy questions in the study’s survey  incorrectly;
• 88 percent answered only two or fewer correctly;
• and the problem is even more pronounced when presented with offline privacy issues – post hoc analysis showed that young Americans were more likely to answer no questions correctly than any other age group.

While many sites offer tips for maintaining one’s general online privacy, substantial guides for navigating social media privacy concerns are limited, largely due to the ever-changing privacy policies of our favorite social media giants.

As the future of privacy online is necessarily unclear, whether the ‘tell-all generation’ remains ‘jacked in’ or ‘checks out’ is now a more relevant question than ever.

Thanks for reading! I’d love to read your thoughts, comments and concerns on social media privacy in the comments section below. I’ll leave you with this relevant cartoon by The Joy of Tech by Nitrozac and Snaggy.

Share the Future

Gizmodo scooped a rare, public in-person meeting between Apple's Steve Jobs and Google's Eric Schmidt.

Last week, I was shocked to read Gizmodo’s scoop that Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt were spotted in person at a café in Palo Alto. As arguably two of the most ‘jacked in’ people in the world, I was intrigued that they would prefer to meet face-to-face for a conversation that could very well take place over GoogleTalk or iChat.

A couple days ago, I attended a Boston Ad Club event with foursquare‘s Dennis Crowley, during which Xconomy‘s Wade Roush interviewed him on the start-up’s meteoric growth and the rise of location-based social networking. Again, I was somewhat surprised that this type of interview — of a tech CEO by a tech writer — was conducted primarily, if not solely, in person.

Foursquare's Dennis Crowley is interviewed by Xconomy's Wade Roush on the rise of location-based social networking at a recent Boston Ad Club event (photo taken on my Blackberry).

As someone who currently works in the brand experience space, I’ve heard both my colleagues and others report that, with budget cuts and public scrutiny, many companies are committing their events budgets to the virtual world.

For some reason, though, there seems to be an intuitive, primitive inclination to have our most important meetings in-person — to see who we’re speaking to face-to-face. Why is that?

The Scientific Point-of-View on Face-to-Face Interaction

Of the innate desire for face-to-face social interactions, The New Yorker’s Atul Gawande notes the ground-breaking research of Harry Harlow, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, with baby rhesus monkeys.

In the mid-1950s, Harlow began breeding his own monkeys to save money on experimental research. Raised in nurseries under conditions similar to human infants in contemporary hospitals, Harlow gave the monkeys food, warm blankets and toys, but isolated them from others to prevent the spread of infection. While physically healthy and, in fact, larger than their counterparts in the wild, the lab-bred monkeys were more than a bit off-kilter. They were prone to staring blankly ahead, rocking in place for long periods, circling their cages repetitively and mutilating themselves.

Wondering what was off with the rhesus (not to be mistaken with Reese’s) monkeys, Harlow and his graduate students tinkered with variables like diet, light exposure, and antibiotics. Then, one of Harlow’s researchers noticed how tightly the monkeys clung to their blankets, and Harlow contemplated whether the strange behavior was due to isolation from their mothers. So, he tried giving them artificial ones, and — long story, short — the baby monkeys became deeply attached to the most life-like of the fake mamma monkeys, though remained psychologically abnormal.

Harlow’s later studies that examined the effect of total isolation from birth found that released test monkeys

“…usually go into a state of emotional shock, characterized by… autistic self-clutching and rocking…One of six monkeys isolated for three months refused to eat after release and died five days later…Twelve months of isolation almost obliterated the animals socially.”

Such monkeys were permanently withdrawn, social outcasts in monkey society,  and were victims of regular attack by wild monkeys.

Gawande further notes studies among neglected and orphaned children who sustained similarly deep and sustained damage. Results among adults — particularly, prison inmates and long-distance solo sailors — also seem to indicate a predisposition to long for in-person social interaction. It is no wonder, then, that astronauts are screened for their tolerance of long periods of isolation, though they have radio and video communication for social contact.

The Business Rationale of Face-to-Face Meetings

In his white paper “Why Face-to-Face Business Meetings Matter”, Prof. Richard Arvey of the National University of Singapore Business School describes why ‘computer-mediated processes’ simply don’t cut it for some types of communications:

“Group processes and outcomes that require coordination, consensus, timing, persuasion of others, etc. are less effectively accomplished using computer mediated communication modalities. Indeed, according to Straus and McGrath, the type of communication medium is likely to affect outcomes “when there is a need for the expression of emotions, when tasks require coordination and timing among members’ activities, when one is attempting to persuade others, or with task require consensus on issues that are affected by attitudes or values of the group members.” (Straus and McGrath, p. 163).”

More interestingly, Arvey explicates the advantages of face-to-face meetings:

“Face-to-face meetings allow members to engage in and observe verbal and non-verbal behavioral styles not captured in most computer mediated communication devises. There are nuances associated with hand gestures, voice quality and volume, facial expressions, and so forth that are simply not captured in email discussion, chat rooms, and the like. Even videoconferencing does not capture all of the dynamics of group members (e.g. the expression of others while one member is talking, etc.).”

Interestingly, Gizmodo applied analyses of these type of behavioral attributes to Jobs’ and Schmidt’s recent meeting (provided by Janine Driver, who has taught CIA and Scotland Yard members how to read body language).

Beyond body language, face-to-face meetings are important, Arvey avers, because

“…business meetings allow participants opportunities to develop important exchange relationships among themselves. These exchanges can be in the form of business negotiations, personal favors, promises, understandings, etc. that cannot often be achieved via other forms of communication because of their personal and informal nature. One psychological theory that emphasizes this notion is “social exchange theory” where human relations are viewed as an exchange of rewards
among individuals or achieving equity between “what you put in” compared to “what you get out” of relationships.”

Most salespersons will agree: face-to-face sales meetings, while costly and time-intensive, typically have the best results.

…..

To end, I’ll provide this brief excerpt from Atul Gawande’s beautifully written article in The New Yorker:

“Human beings are social creatures. We are social not just in the trivial sense that we like company, and not just in the obvious sense that we each depend on others. We are social in a more elemental way: simply to exist as a normal human being requires interaction with other people.”

I would love to hear your thoughts on this issue. Please feel free to leave your questions, comments and concerns below!

Share the Future

An image pulled from DeviantArt by CrapsY (username).

The first was with an old friend, Michael P. (whose facebook profile I took the below quotation from), who forsook the life of  a Harvard-graduated consultant to work in a coffee shop and live as a Central Square hipster. Our conversation, which ranged from ‘catching up’ to ‘big issues,’ gravitated toward Michael’s thoughts on an emergent counterculture that he termed ‘the unplugged’ — that is, those who refuse to subscribe to a lifestyle that increasingly depends on modern technology. A proponent of this lifestyle, Michael made significant efforts in the last couple years to reduce his online footprint, pare down his digital interactions, and do things like increase the size of his record collection and work on a screenplay about an 80′s record producer.

As I understood them, Michael’s views (and those of ‘the unplugged’) are premised on the notion that technology detracts from our lives’ experiences by drawing our attention away from our real-world experiences and interactions. Michael posits that those who are ‘plugged in’ misguidedly reify technological advances as ‘progress.’ While technological artifacts seemingly make our lives better, they actually distance us from one another and definitively human activities — e.g., expressing ourselves through art and engaging the world through our tactile senses (sound familiar?).

The ‘unplugged’ view, I think, tends to overly romanticize the past and a (purportedly) simpler way of socializing, expressing oneself, and interacting with the world. Though I understand the love for and actually tend to prefer activities that more intimately (in a physical sense) connect me to the product of my work, I (and, I think, many others) view technological artifacts as just another set of tools we can use to interact with the world — e.g., a paintbrush, a pencil, a pair of glasses. In other words, technological advances most directly affect media, not expression. Or, more simply, technological advances most directly affect the tools we use, not how we use them.

That said, the forms of expression undeniably change as a result of the given media through which they are expressed. The notion of ‘friendship,’ for instance, has changed dramatically. In a world where roughly 30 percent of the facebook friendships of those between 18 and 24 are people whom they have never actually met, ‘friendship,’ it seems, certainly means something less substantial than what it perhaps once did. For photographers, the development of Adobe’s Creative Suite has changed how they view their craft.

In this light, I think the dichotomy between ‘unplugged’ and ‘plugged in’ is misguided. The analogy implies a reliance upon a sort of technological energy for functionality. But technology is more than that–at least for me. It enriches, enhances and augments my reality; it creates opportunities to share information, connect with others and learn about things I never would have been able to otherwise. In many ways, my subscription to a life filled with technological artifacts is more akin to the Matrix’s ‘jacking in’ — that is, it’s a choice to participate in a whole other experience of reality (I recognize the negative implications that this term may hold. My use of this term is also an admission that there is certainly something lost in exchanging the simplicity of more immediate physical interactions with the world for a view shaped by a world in which technological advances are a given). In contrast, a life without technology, I think, is a rejection of participation in this world and its benefits — and so, I will term it ‘checking out.’

This distinction leads me to think of the second conversation I had on this subject. During my final interview presentation with Jack Morton Worldwide, where I now work in business development, Liz Bigham, the Director of Brand Marketing, asked me if I perceived a pull-back reaction to a world saturated with social media — a desire for real, physical connections with other people. During the interview, my first response was that the nature of interactions is being transformed by media and the capabilities of technology. That is, the line between ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ experiences would continue to erode as time progressed, and any desire for ‘physical’ experiences could eventually be entirely satisfied by virtual ones.

But thinking back on this question, I’m not certain this is the case. I anticipate that the ideological divide between ‘jacked in’ and ‘checked out’ peoples will only increase as technologies transform our experiences of reality more dramatically. Michael’s disdain for technology isn’t fading quickly, and there’s something intuitively appealing about his rejection of the ‘jacked in’ life that evokes sympathy. Don’t I also enjoy it when I get out to nature, leave behind my cell phone and computer, and cut myself off from the technological world? But my memory of the practicality of using technology always seems to win out. I like having a world of information at my fingertips, the people I know available at the touch of a button, and the host of possibilities technology provides me. I suppose, though, that’s the divide–some people don’t.

But perhaps there is something to my initial intuition in my conversation with Liz, and the ‘checked out’ counterculture will ultimately have less ammunition to fuel its ideology. At the core of disdain for technology, I think, is disdain for ‘the complex,‘ a purportedly enhanced reality in which our actions must conform to the constraints placed upon them by the limitations of technology. What this disdain fails to recognize is that accompanying the trend of technological complexity is an ever-increasing tendency toward simplicity in design. User interfaces are becoming more elegant and intuitive, despite increasingly complex back-ends. Physically, technological artifacts — e.g., televisions — are also becoming less cumbersome and streamlined. This tendency toward design simplicity will only become more apparent as  futures waves of technological artifacts reach us.

My guess: ‘checked out’ people will resist until Apple comes out with a strong enough ad campaign for its iTablet.

“As I look around the contemporary American scene I am puzzled by what seems generally to pass for a historical object or monument…With us the association seems to be not with our politically historical past…what we cherish are mementos of a bygone daily existence without a definite date. Archie Bunker’s armchair will recall–at least to the present generation–not only the many hours agreeably spent watching television, but also the environment, the setting, of a popular program, though not necessarily the program itself.”
- J. B. Jackson

Share the Future