The ICT Optimist

If we could describe a communications experience without being biased by how we do such activities today, how would we describe it?

We would interact with people by name, role or skill they had rather than technical identities and underlying systems. We would never dial a 10 digit number to reach a person; we would simply invoke communications by name or some other human centric intuitive identity.

We would invoke communications based on the way we wished to interact (audio, visual, text, virtual reality…) not based on the tool and technology that implemented the communications experience. We would cease to care that our audio conversation was done via and enterprise PBX, Skype, Google or a cell phone. There is no value in our knowing the details of the technical implementation of our communications experience but there is high value in our ability to select the way we wish to interact.

We would be able to have multiple communications channels and modes (audio, visual, informational, …) active in the context of a single act of communicating. The ideal experience is one where we connect to other parties and within that connection many tools are brought to bear to enrich the flow of information but they are contextually related to each other and their aggregate is the communications experience not each one as a distinct communications experience. Some call this multi-modal interaction.

We would trust the systems to act on our behalf. The idea of telling a communication system to manage a complex interaction would be normal. Imagine being able to instruct a system to “get the team together when the customer call in”  or “make sure everyone is informed about an ongoing event” or even “organize  team to respond to an issue and bring me in when they are ready to give me an update”. Every one of these scenarios is logical, intuitive but today done by human intervention rather than the systems of communications.

We would have full access to all of our communications capabilities wherever we are. There would be no concept of fixed versus mobile communications. Simply put the experience would be fully with us, regardless of if we were at our desk, in our homes, on a plane, in a car or with a customer.

We would be able to control all communications services and interact with them in a uniform way but not have to carry the infrastructure around with us. What we would have is a “universal remote control” and an interface into the experience.  Imagine the user experience being so simple that you could invoke complex interaction and collaboration simply by saying to your interface “get the team together at 3PM”. No more emails, phone calls, phone tag, dialing in, calling people or in any way interacting at a technical level with the system that enabled communications. This is the equivalent of how great universal remotes work in home entertainment today. You push a button and the TV turns on, the DVD launches, the surround system invokes and all the linkages between them happen so that you can enjoy a home theater experience with a single click. If that is possible in entertainment why can’t we imagine it being the way we interact with communications in the future?

The Future of Communications is:

Using Technology to Interact between people using human identities and structures, over multiple modes and methods of communications that are unified into a single integrated experience that is available to us fully wherever we are at the click of a button or the invocation of a simple directive.  Sounds a lot like the Communicator in Star Trek…now the trick is to make it a reality.