Future Visions

I don’t understand why technology companies feel compelled to demonstrate their “visions of the future”. I don’t understand who they are trying to reach, and what they are trying to convince those target people of.

If this is how companies demonstrate their commitment to innovation, I disagree, and I’ll present my thoughts about three such “future visions” here:

• The skewed perspective of Blackberry’s future, revolving around the phone administrator
• A whimsically cynical take on Ericsson’s ideas for the Social Web of Things
• The psychic nonsense of Microsoft’s future interfaces

Instead, I think these videos are distractions. They are little traps for the mind, to reassure us that Microsoft, Blackberry, Ericsson and whoever else, that they have our future in hand. “Don’t worry about the future”, they say, “we’ve taken care of it, see? NOW BUY OUR SOULLESS WORD PROCESSING PACKAGE AND STOP COMPLAINING.”

Instead of cooing about some marketeer’s wet dream, lets figure out what the future holds by actually building it, yeah?