Ben Jones on Seeing Into The Future

The ‘social ecologist’ Peter Drucker once said, “The easiest way to predict the future is to create it.” Agreed. Another way to look into the crystal ball and see what the future holds was told to me by a good friend who works at NASA. He said, “watch a lot of science fiction or become a Trekkie”. Through this, he said, I will start to see that we are constantly shown the inventions of the future and that the scriptwriters’ ability to get it right is quite remarkable.

Predicting the future

So, if you want to predict the future just look at what Steven Spielberg and many others have shown us in the various blockbusters that millions have flocked to. I’m not talking about the converted Speak & Spell contraption that ET used to communicate to his home planet, but rather the various devices, screens and experiences that are now becoming a reality.

Remember the tricorder from Star Trek – the full body health scanner which diagnosed that you had in fact died because you had been hit by a very hot laser? Well, that’s now real in the form of a product from V-Sense Medical which utilises NASA technology.

And what about Minority Report and the interface that Tom Cruise navigated with the movement of his hands? Dual-sided OLED screens or transparent OLEDs are making their way into the mainstream, and we have navigation technologies like Leap Motion and even more impressively, Google’s Project Soli, which helps interaction with devices by harnessing the power of radar technology.

Virtual and augmented reality is also emerging, with the Microsoft HoloLens, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and the highly anticipated Magic Leap. All of these things can be traced back to sci-fi inventions like the famous Star Trek holodeck.

But why waffle on about science fiction’s predictive abilities? Well, they provide us with good insight into what is coming next at Cannes and can highlight what will be the key themes this year and beyond.

Technology opens up new doors to what is possible and, increasingly, we have started to see new festivals, such as the Innovation Lions, come to the fore because technology plays such a big part in an authentic connection with the consumer. And if a brand can harness those authentic connections through what might feel like magic, but which is pure data and algorithms, then it’s worth an award.

Customer service by design

So, what is going to be the talk of Cannes in 2016? I’d bet on seeing a great deal of conversation around – and awards for – AR and VR projects, which are emerging as an amazing way of telling stories that we remember.

Building upon last year’s Innovation Lions, for which I was lucky enough to be a jury member, I think we will see more real-world products and services developed by brands, allowing them the opportunity to truly transform themselves. It won’t be the ads we remember and award as much as the products themselves.

And finally, going ‘back to the future’ (I’ve always wanted to say that), if you look at films like Buck Rogers…, Wall-E [above] and 2001: A Space Odyssey, they had intelligent concierges – Twiki, Auto and HAL9000 respectively – which were, ultimately, algorithms that serviced a user’s needs.

I believe an emerging theme at Cannes will almost certainly be the world of ultimate customer service through intelligence. What I love is that the big consultancies are rapidly encroaching into the ‘digital’ space and buying design shops and hiring designers to make beautiful websites. So, maybe it’s not all about websites and apps any longer in this new world of sci-fi service.