Five in Five

IBM recently announced its thinking behind “five innovations that will change the way we live over the next five years“. Apparently influenced by the Innovation Jam results, some of the ideas are whacky, others are intriguing  while one is, for some of us at least, a reassurance that we’re on the right track.

The five in five are…

  1. Healthcare prognosis: more flexible, accessible, affordable
  2. Real time speech translation will become the norm
  3. The Internet moves to the 3rd dimension
  4. Micromanaging our environment down to the nano-level
  5. Get ready for mind-reading phones

There’s flash version and a non-flash version too.  Here’s the full text of the 3D Internet one, which helps flesh out what this term will come to mean.

The Internet moves to the 3rd dimension

The popular online immersive destinations, such as Second Life, will evolve into a 3-D Internet, much like the early work by AOL and Prodigy evolved into the World Wide Web. The 3-D Internet will enable new kinds of interactive education, remote medicine and consumer experiences, transforming how we interact with our friends and family, teachers, doctors and more.

Imagine being able to virtually walk the aisles of your favorite stores, interact with experts and even virtually try on clothes, all in the convenience of your own home. Or if you could recreate the blueprints of a room in your home and test out different appliances, cabinets styles, colors and more.

Kids can experience things that they could never access through traditional means. For example, they will be able to walk through rain forests or visit ancient Rome.

Today, 3-D virtual worlds are emerging on the Internet that have a very realistic look and feel to them.

Working with a broad community, and leveraging decades of experience in supercomputing, visualization and work with the three major game platforms (Microsoft’s XBOX 360, Nintendo’s Wii and Sony’s PlayStation 3), IBM hopes to help build out this next generation Internet, one that is open, immersive and 3-D.

The site also points to Ian’s Wimbledon YouTube video, though neglects to mention the follow up Australian Open project.

To whoever was behind this (yes, IBM is a big enough place that I have no idea), nice one. A great eye opener to get people thinking about meaningfully near-term ideas.

One thought on “Five in Five

Comments are closed.