FUTURE NOW TECHNOLOGY HORIZONS 2015 the new body language NEW BODY LANGUAGE NEW BODY How wearables, implantables, and wireless networks will connect our communities and alter our anatomies 2015 SCENARIOS OF A GENERATIONAL SHIFT TECHNOLOGY ENABLERS OF BODY AREA NETWORKS PLUS: FASHION + SPORTS WEARABLES, NANOSCALE OMMUNICATION,C MIND MELDS, AND MORE! IFTF.ORG Artifact from the Future, not a real product. First appeared in Food Futures 2013. FUTURE NOW CONNECT WITH US facebook.com/iftf FUTURE NOW is a production of the Institute for the Future, an independent, @iftf info iftf.org nonprofit strategic research group. @ IFTF’s Technology Horizons Program GET NEWS FROM THE FUTURE combines a deep understanding of quarterly newsletter technology and societal forces in the iftf.org/iftf-you/subscribe/ coming decade. Look out for our VISIT OUR GALLERY 201 Hamilton Avenue next issue in 2016! Palo Alto, CA 94301 iftf.org PREPARE FOR THE FUTURE TODAY! Whether you want to talk to us about a customized research project, are interested in sponsoring one of our futures programs, or you are looking for a research-based futures perspective—contact us! Artifact from the Future, not a real product. First appeared in Health Horizons 2013. WELCOME CONTENTS2015 A few months ago we were running a foresight workshop semi-permeable skin—united by ubiquitous wireless signals. in a quirky Midwestern office, surrounded by executives, These technologies are altering our anatomy, but they’re IN THIS ISSUE THE NEW BODY LANGUAGE marketers, and bench scientists of a large food doing more than that. They’re expanding what our bodies manufacturer. When we asked for “signals of things to are able to communicate—building on the many existing come,” wearable fitness trackers came up immediately. “I gestures our various cultures have already evolved. You 6 have one. You have one. That’s not that surprising. But now could call it a New Body Language. And this new language my great aunt has one! She’s competing with me on FitBit!” is giving us new ways to relate to ourselves, to one another, 6 A GUIDE to the New Body Language We stopped and did a quick temperature check of adoption and to the increasingly Automated World around us. How our intentions shape the future of wearable and implantable technologies in the wider social circles of this group. “My daughter.” “My mother.” “My neighbor.” “All my kid’s friends…until Most pieces in this issue focus on the human side of they take them off at school.” Every one of the two-dozen the Human+Machine Symbiosis that IFTF’s Technology 25 SCENARIOS of a Generational Shift people in the room had recently encountered wrist- Horizons team has been tracking this year—how body area in the New Body Language wrapping wearables in the wild. networks will augment the intentions and expressions What body area networks could do to our communities and anatomies that play out in our everyday lives. Some pieces illuminate in a few short decades This is not a unique report. Wearables have reached the the subtle, even invisible technologies that broker our point of ubiquity in at least some circles. Those circles are outrageous level of connection—the machines that feed off extending beyond the Silicon Valley techies, and at least our passively generated data and varying motivations. In 32 EXPRESSIONS of the New Body Language some of those wearables are evolving beyond the buzzing, fashion and fandom, striking a pose or igniting struggle, Meet six archetypes putting their intentions for body area networks vibrating wrist adornments that can now be had for $30 a we express the new body language. into action in 2025 piece, in a 3-pack, at Costco. Welcome to 2025. In this inaugural issue of Future Now, we’re going beyond this present moment, pulsing on our wrists, to look at whole 25 bodies: social bodies, bodies already adept at communi- Technology Horizons cating, automating, and connecting in various ways. We’re Program Director discovering how technologies are knitting together in a Rod Falcon Miriam Lueck Avery Rod Falcon new kind of connective tissue—inside and outside our Future Now Editors Miriam Lueck Avery, Ben Hamamoto Technology Horizons Team and Contributing Writers Jan English-Lueck, Devin Fidler, Alex Goldman, Eri Gentry, Lyn Jeffery, Jeremy Kirchbaum, Bradley Kreit, Mike Liebhold, David Pescovitz, Sarah Smith, Andrew Trabulsi, Alessandro Voto Contributing Editors Alec Yoshio MacDonald, David Thigpen, Kathi Vian, Carol Westberg Program Manager 32 Meagan Jensen Design Robin Bogott, Helen Bruno, Dylan Hendricks, Karin Lubeck, Robin Weiss Illustration Mohammed Abdulraman, Trent Kuhn, Keiichi Matsuda, Owen Partridge Executive Producer Jean Hagan Business Development Dawn Alva, Neela Lazkani, FUTURE NOW 2015 3 Sean Ness CONTENTS 10 Devices ‘Disappear’ A Vision for Tomorrow’s User Interfaces 18 Feeling the Rush The Amplified Fan 8 Mind Meld 36 High Fashion Meets Maker Toward Brain-to-Brain Networking Manufacturing 14 Before Body Area Networks INSTITUTE FOR THE FUTURE INVITES YOU TO Personal Tech Becomes Fashion Thomas Zimmerman’s Vision of the 40 Bodies that Buy Connected Self BECOME A FORESIGHT PRACTITIONER Could Bio-based Purchasing Bring Us Closer 16 The Electrospit to Our Better Selves? Wearables for Digital Music-makers 48 Bodies of Data 22 At the Nexus of Science Fiction Who Are We Through the Eyes of Algorithms? and Future Fact In a world of rapid and constant change, foresight is a core With Ramez Naam 54 Easy as 00101010 competency that turns managers into leaders and creates 34 Designing Technologies for Our organizations that are more resilient, more nimble, and Creating Policy for the Next Frontier of Tech Adoption Radical, Adaptive Human Bodies more vibrant. With Sara Hendren 18 Now the Institute for the Future’s foresight trainings can help 46 Altered Anatomies you build this core competency and bring it into your own Voices from the Vanguard of Implantable Tech organization—or the organizations you work with. 52 West and East Africa REGISTER TODAY 10 Where Social Innovation Leads the Future Neela Lazkani [email protected] | 650-233-9562 58 Looking Backwards from 2025 Sean Ness [email protected] | 650-233-9517 An Anthropologist Explores How Body Area Networks Upcoming sessions: Became Family Area Networks December 9–11 HT 60 Animism, Identity, April 5–7 IG 48 and Austerity June 20–23 S Japan’s Human+Machine O Space is limited; I Past and Future E D early booking recommended. R U 61 Crashing My Hotel Room T Ask us about sessions O S A Cautionary Tale targeted to Philanthropy, Health, or your team! F 62 Evolving Nano-Scale Communication Biology, Engineering, and Robotics Converge with Dr. Ian F. Akyildiz A GUIDE TO the New Body Language How wearables, wireless and implants will connect our communities and alter our anatomy In the next decade, as computational power and BALANCING OUR INTENTIONS IGNORING/ENGAGING | Whether we ignore it entirely or allow it to engage our attention with fantastical connectivity are built into virtually everything, recon- The intentions that will form the New Body Language figuring our personal technologies will be as simple interfaces, the New Body Language creates new ways to HIDING/CONNECTING via technologies will build come in polar pairs that we will balance in different ways manage our attention. In “Altered Anatomies,” body hacker as putting on a jacket or removing a pair of shoes. our social identities and self-awareness to create a wide variety expressions—personal and Amal Graafstra posits that “a good implant becomes so cultural, consistent and contradictory. To understand the fully integrated into daily life that it disappears.” Indeed, At a technical level, this is the story of an emerging world of expressions that will emerge, we must first understand the the end state of much of the New Body Language is to body area networks, where devices in, on and around the tensions across these polar pairs. become as invisible and subconscious as our postures and body can be reconfigured throughout the day to enhance micro-expressions. David Pescovitz gives us a glimpse our experience of any situation. ISOLATING/INTEGRATING our devices, data, and HIDING/CONNECTING | By revealing intimate details of the rapidly approaching ability to “Mind Meld”—where identities will shape the ways we relate to larger systems about our own bodies and selves and connecting us networks of human brains will allow humanity to engage At the personal level, the transformation brought on by with others in new ways, the New Body Language will with our problems on a whole new level. these technologies will be more intimate and profound. We permeate our social and personal lives. We will use body will see the rise of an entirely new kind of body language, area network technologies to connect with our heroes DISPOSING/INVESTING | We won’t adopt all mediated by a constantly evolving suite of personal flying through the air, as Bradley Kreit explores in his article technologies in our body area networks in 18- to 24-month technologies. Ranging from passive and secretive to wildly IGNORING/ENGAGING new flows of sensation “The Amplified Fan,” and with our most intimate partners, upgrade cycles. The permanence of body area networks aggressive, this new body language will shape how we and information will help us manage our attention as Jamais Cascio reveals in the generational scenario and their configurations will vary widely. In “High Fashion use wearable and implantable technologies to express our and awareness “Memory.” Sometimes, however, our bodies are a feedback Meets Maker Manufacturing,” Lyn Jeffery argues that the deepest social, cultural, and individual aspirations. device for us alone, as Keiichi Matsuda reflects in his fast-paced worlds of fashion and technology will look more interview with Mike Leibhold.