It's a (Virtually) Wonderful World

Yesterday I had the privilege of hearing Richard Green, a US-based futurist and CEDIA consultant, talk at the annual Connected Home Conference in Sydney

I wish everyone had been there because it was a truly inspiring vision of the future and even after 3 hours I was still transfixed.
 
He may not have been looking that far out - 5 years from now in fact - but for someone who can see on the promise of connectivity too I found it very exciting.
 
Richard also believes we are about to become a connected planet.
 
Connected homes and offices where our media is always on and streamed seamlessly, where we store and access information and services on 'cloud' networks, and all of this available at lightning speeds.
 
For Richard - and me - this will mean a major difference to our lives.
 
Not just in the pleasurable things like completely immersive, at-a-touch communication and entertainment, but in areas like productive, creative and flexible work, energy management and digital health.
 
The last three - work, health and resources - are shaping up to be major issues in this century as the planet gets more crowded, we live much, much longer, and we try to reduce or power and water footprint in sustainable ways.
 
Richard brought a lot of this vision to life. With smarter homes and communities we can 'localize' far more than we've done for centuries through flexible work, easier and wider networking, and the drive to create user-generated information. In his words that means interdependence, not independence.
 
The blurring of real and virtual worlds in our appliances, machines and services, as well as real advances in the use of artificial intelligence, has the promise to deal with many of the problems we now face in a more efficient way.
 
In fact we and our partners pointed to many of these issues and ideas four years ago in the Technology Roadmap (copper.com.au) - so it's great to see we're on the same page.
 
While we've been pushing home connectivity for a long time, we're also focusing much more on how we can manage energy better- not just at home, but more broadly through the use of smart grids.
 
In fact John Chamber, global CEO of Cisco, told us that the 'Enernet' will be 1000 times the size and importance of the internet...that's a big call, but I can certainly see what he means.
 
Every major company in the world is getting into this space including GE, Google, Microsoft, Clipsal, Energy Hub, Intel, TED dashboard, Blue bolt, etc. Here in Australia the private sector is also being forward thinking and one initiative, the Residential Enegy Forums (copper.com.au), is seeing broad participation and real work on getting smart grids to actually happen, but to do it without commercial barriers and uneven or poor standards.
 
Richard told us that the word "macromyopia" means not seeing the big picture because we're stuck in today. His talk convinced me that the big picture does involve technology, and particularly connective technology, and that it will be essential to building a smart future.
 
And of course one way to start doing that is to take a look online at a video of Richard Green's talk at www.connectedconference.com.au.
           
John Fennell
jjfennell@copperdev.com