Microsoft: Are They Where They Thought They'd Be in 2019?

 In 2009, Microsoft released a video anticipating the world in 2019. That was only 10 years ago. 

I recently showed you how much Social Media has changed in 10 years - so how close was Microsoft's guess?

Watch this video to find out: 

 

 

The answer is .... not as close as I would have thought.  Nonetheless, they just hit a Trillion Dollar market cap.  So, they must have gotten something right! 

It's interesting to think about which factors or missing innovations caused the difference between their imagined vision and reality.

They really bought into scaleable, HD, transparent, touch screen displays being not only available, but located in everything by now ... which suffice to say, isn't the case. 

The reality is ...

• A lot of these innovations actually have little use - Not every situation needs a transparent monitor - they're worse than standard monitors in almost every way. You end up using absurdly expensive screens to display a digital version of a post it note or handwriting. The desk/monitor hybrid would be covered in sheets of paper, office supplies, and your coffee. A boarding pass being a screen is highly inefficient for so many reasons - and so is a digital newspaper. We have those - they're called phones.  
• They assumed batteries would be way farther along - The thinner your monitor, the more transparent, the harder it is to create a high-performance high-fidelity battery to maintain it. Unfortunately, batteries haven't had nearly the boom like the rest of our tech (though they are getting better). 
• IoT Adoption/Security - One of the biggest problems with IoT is that the more these pieces communicate the harder it is to prevent hacks. A chain is only as strong as the weakest link - and a smart coffee maker isn't nearly secure as your computer. 
• Fingerprints (Glass) - I get this isn't a "real" concern - but every piece of technology they showed was transparent/glass. On top of being very breakable (see Samsungs new foldable phones) Could you imagine how smudged/dirty everywhere would appear? Imagine a New York subway with this technology.
• Expense v. Convenience - A lot of technologies are feasible - but aren't cost-effective. Look at the slow adoption of Solar cells as their efficiency per cost went up.

Making everything a device/screen means more opportunity for companies to serve you ads and retarget you ad infinitum. 

Ultimately, I find this perceived "modern digital office environment" very inefficient. A lot of these "innovations" are less dynamic and easy to use than their analog counterparts. Mechanical keyboards serve a purpose. 

In reality, a lot of the trends we've adopted to increase collaboration and sharing have been counterproductive. Not every office needs an open floor plan - not every team needs 15 subteams with 4 bosses - and using 20 different productivity tools actually decreases productivity. 

That being said, we've come a long way in 10 years. Think about the quality of your phone in 2009 or your desktop computer - whirring loudly as it tried to access the disk, or the internet, or anything really. 

What we have now isn't perfect - but it's leaps and bounds ahead of where we were. A lot of technology seems like science fiction - like the Babel fish from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.