227/08 Social challanges s the basis for foresight - Gaia

thing, anywhere media) becomes finally a reality.
Most popular uses of Internet - search engines,
messaging, social media, electronic commerce,
banking and payments, entertainment - have migrated
to mobile devices. Mobile TV is also a progression
on this trend having mainly the same
media content, but with new devices and new usage
contexts.
The richness and multitude of different family
structures will continue to grow. Despite this,
family entertainment at home is in central role
and is reflected in home electronics, building
styles and decoration. The home electronics
equipment often includes a multitude of devices
for different entertainment, and non-entertainment
purposes. For the evenings, the family gathers
in front of the latest craze: 3DTV.
One continuation along this path is that digital
and electronic media become a seamless part of
our everyday life. Media can be tailored much
better than today based on own interests and
needs. Active media use and participation in
community activities is more relevant. In many
ways this can be considered relevant to the ideas
of ubiquitous or ambient intelligence where the
goal of new technology is to make life easier but
also to disappear, to go out of the way, so that people
can go on living their lives in a more pleasant
and effective way.
However, as the technological infrastructure
grows more complex, there will be a growing need
to be able to effortlessly control the home media
environment for entertainment. The underlying
technology infrastructure will be drastically simplified
reversing the current trend of growing complexity
at home. No wonder people find this complexity
too overwhelming and demand seamless
interconnectivity and simplicity. This growth can
currently be seen, for example, by considering the
modern digital photo infrastructure consisting of
several digital cameras, mobile phones, transfer
cables, wireless connections, PC, TV, media
boxes, removable hard disks, backups, scanners,
printers, drivers, various desktop software, available
network services, etc.
Print media has also evolved to be smarter and to
better meet the everyday needs of people. There
will be new systems for producing and printing
high-quality print publications at home, or in the
neighborhood. The frequency of physical delivery
times of newspapers to homes is increased
and become more flexible, i.e. people can have
their morning paper, afternoon paper, evening paper,
or a customized family paper according to
need. There is also a significant growth in family-centric
self-published content.
New media and information technology is effortless,
seamless, not requiring plenty of attention
(such like paper is today). One of the most important
technical steps forward has been made in the
area of observing human behavior and adapting
to it. 10
Home environments will also become smarter
than they are now. They can notice who is there
and where other people are. In general, the use of
location tracking information everywhere grows.
This naturally raises plenty of privacy concerns,
but also new technical solutions for privacy management
and pseudonymous services have made
these issues less of a topic for burning discussion.
People are very concerned about security, including
both data security and physical security. This
continues to be a booming industry trying to alleviate
the risks of the vulnerabilities of our digital
and physical life situations. Unique identification
of people has been solved, and we have persistent
“ID-auras” in everyday use that are the representation
of our electronic identities.
Technology makes possible real-time communication,
coordination and control in different life
contexts and between them. ICT and media supports
better control of balance between working
tasks and own time. Email will not be as important
as it is now for everyday electronic commu-
10 We may be approaching the Starfire vision by Sun Microsystems (1993,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKJNxgZyVo0) , which had the emphasis on natural interaction,
seamless transfer of media between different devices, and ubiquitous media capture.
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