More on Post-Screen Futures: What's it Look Like?

@monk51295 read my last post on post-screen futures and asks what such a future would 'look' like. While I don't think of myself as much of a science fiction writer, I can offer some suggestions that -- to me at least -- seem practical.

First of all, the existing built environment would have to be retrofitted. We could start with external surfaces. Take your average city block in the downtown of your average city. The exterior of every building as well as the surface beneath your feet would be touch-interface optional and capable of projection and image grabbing. This sort of thing -- making every surface in a room an access point, for example -- is already in the pipeline. Where it gets really exciting is when it goes outside and computing becomes public as opposed to personal. When computing becomes the graffiti of urban life.

However, for those times when public computing is not desired, we'll turn to our personal connection. But iPhones and the like will have gone the way of laserdiscs as they will have been replaced by glasses and satellite-connected contact lenses that offer the wearer a sensory-based personalized augmented reality experience.

What both the built-environment public computing model and the sensory-based personalized augmented reality model have in common is that they are both aspects of post-sedentary computing. They change the nature of how we react to the environment and they would force us to rethink how time works in our day to day lives. In terms of schools, this would of course eliminate much of what a compartmentalized building is useful for; I see those sorts of antiquities being replaced by communally activated information and learning walls housed within smart environments and as open and physical as possible. Get rid of the desks and chairs and let the technology help get people on their feet. I'm envisioning a sort of interactive and communal digital Greek Stoa where the structure itself -- that is, the architecture and the circulation plan -- is the connection device.

Would love to hear all of your thoughts on this. Let's take time out of the present for just a moment to get all 22nd century for a spell.

Dreaming of a Post-Screen Future

I spend far too much time behind a computer screen.

So I dream of a post-screen future. A future where the major trends in contemporary computing -- social media, the cloud, touch surfaces, interconnected telecommunication and video, and augmented reality -- meet with the built environment.

As computing becomes more cloud based and less 'personal' device intensive, we're going to see a surge in smart buildings and smart environments. Surface-based interaction and AR merging with both interior and exterior interactive supergraphic architecture will ultimately replace the concept of devices themselves, let alone screens.

While you might carry a small device for personal communication and connection to information, that device will only be a key to unlock the computing potential of the built environment itself.

Eventually, the architecture of our built environment will itself become the access point and the built environment, infrastructure, and architecture itself will be the 'device'. The environment of life and digital access will be same thing.

And we'll laugh about how we used to lead sedentary lives beholden to a screen.