In the last few posts we have shown videos of possible PIM of the future:
- Apple’s personal assistant from 1987 about life in 2011
- Sun’s Starfire concept from 1994 about life in 2004 and
- Virtual reality PIM from 2002
In 2009 Microsoft published their video of future PIM mixed with augmented reality. It is predicting our life in 2019
Although somehow different, this video has many similarities with the previous three (especially Starfire concept).
In the meanwhile we can look at what is available right now in the research arena. prototypes such as Microsoft’s Bluespace and IBM’s Broadbench are trying to bring the future closer together, providing mashups and data ubiquity. University of North Carolina has a nice set of papers about the office of the future. Microsoft also introduced its Surface and at Lancaster University Dominik Schmidt developed the personal space in such multiuser tabletop touchscreen environments called HandsDown. CSAIL brought us Datapress for easy-non-programming data visualizations. Some of these tools are already available while some are still in their research stage (although working). There are many other examples but we mentioned a few to show where the research is heading and what are today’s possibilities.
Although many things still have to be considered and reconsidered (privacy, security, access, visibility, etc) I’m looking forward to the future. And as you know, people will have to adopt these new technologies which might be a challenge of its own.
A nice collection of images and videos of our possible PIM future can also be found at Flowing Data.
