GLOBAL FUTURE ANALYSIS


TAILWINDS | DIGITAL COMMUNICATION


Telephone has become digital voice. Email has replaced letters. Newsletters have replaced mailings. Website's had replace printed media. Speed has become default in communication. Low priced the guidelines. Videocalling is the next step that will be made. Certainly as commuting and traveling become more expensive. Videocalling will be one of the killer apps for high bandwidths. The other killer app will be narrowcasting (in most extreme form 1:1). Broadcasting music radio will be replaced by listening to the play list of someone with the choice of music someone likes. Broadcasting television is already in transite to YouTube type of channels. Multicasting will (one sender, several simultaneously receivers) will replace the old broadcasting technologies for high subscribed castings, like news channels and sports channels. But the tailwind of videocalling will be gigantically. Videocalling will replace travelling enormously: it's cheap, it will be high quality, it takes less time. Videocalling also will replace face to face office meetings severely, as offices becomes less location bounded and each year more and more not location bounded organizational information production, processing, communication structures. Mobile voice calling has become giant (first low volume by old standards, than skyrocking by GSM, and these days more and more by UMTS/CDMA), mobile videocalling will become giant. The new CDMA (the latest improved version of UMTS) technology allows above high resolution videocalling without any live delay. When videocalling will become regular, office based production (and thereby) commuting will enter a severe declining phase. When managers can look their employees remotely in the eyes, the need for commuting to one shared dedicated office location disappears. Office ICT has become already more and more webbased and thereby location independent.


Author: Gijs Graafland


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