Ryan Anderson dot ca

6am – your alarm goes off.  You awaken to a song streamed over the web, and based on your musical preferences and the day of the week.  You fumble, reaching for the skip button, to listen to the day’s top headlines from your news aggregation application.  The clock gives you the weather report for the day, makes suggestions for what to wear, and reminds you that your first appointment is at 9:00.

In the bathroom, you shower and shave, and add a note to your family’s collective shopping list via the bathroom computer that you need more toothpaste.  In the background, an application has already sent electronic coupons to your phone.  As you step onto the scale, your weight and body fat percentage are sent to your lifestream, altering your online workout schedule slightly to accommodate a slight weight gain over the past couple of weeks.

You head down to the kitchen for breakfast, and add a few more items to your shopping list.  You read the rest of your news at the kitchen table on your e-book reader, wirelessly sync your laptop and phone, and head off to the office.

When you get in the car, you find notifications that your friend has sent you a new playlist of songs he thought you’d like, and a crowdsourced website tells you where the best time and place will be to fuel up that day.

When you arrive at the office, you check your communication timeline, a conglomeration of personal and professional messages sent to you from your social graph through any medium.  You notice that a friend has an art opening that night, so you check your wife and children’s calendar, and seeing that they are free, you add the event to yours and notify them.

Your job is different that it was a few years before.  You collaborate with larger teams, most of which are spread across the world.  Projects are managed through an online system, and all documents are stored within the system.  Software is almost exclusively web-based now, with the exception of high-processor applications like video production and 3d rendering.  You communicate with colleagues through a video instant messaging system that allows group meetings, one-on-one exchanges or broadcast messages that will be added to a timeline.  Email is still part of the organization, but it is primarily used for contracts and purchase orders.

At lunch, you leave the office to run a few errands.  As you walk down the street, your GPS enabled phone alerts you that a friend of yours is in the neighbourhood.  Since you both have your status set to “available,” you call him to meet up for lunch at a nearby cafe which was recommended through your mobile device.

On your way back to the office, your phone once again notifies you that one of the items on your shopping list is available for well below regular price at a store you’re near.  Checking the price, you decide to stop in and pick it up.

After the day is done, you head back home, but first you need to pick up something for dinner.  Before you left work, you checked into your online meal planner, and selected a few favourites based on your mood and how much time you had to cook.  You sent the suggestions to your wife, who narrowed it down to salmon with asparagus and rice.

Knowing that you were out of salmon and low on rice, your shopping list automatically added the ingredients to your list on your mobile, and based on your location, route, best prices and user reviews of quality, directed you to the best store to do your shopping quickly before heading home.

Later that evening, at the art opening, you tell your network via your mobile device that you’re at the gallery, and find out that one of your friends has a colleague in the same business as you at the same event.  He introduces you remotely, and you meet in person and talk about the exhibit.  When you part, you add each other to your respective networks wirelessly, and you tag him as a friend of your friend, and a potential business partner.  This tagging system lets you control the flow of information, separating your personal and professional life seamlessly.

When you return home, you unwind in front of the television for a little while, selecting a couple of shows to watch before bed.  Broadcast television is still around, but you watch most of your television on-demand through your internet connection.  You select one network show, and an independent comedy show from Australia produced by a couple of writers in a small studio.  While you watch, you discuss the show with a number of other loyal fans, some of whom you’ve added to your network.  Your personal ratings and feedback on the show actually affect the content of the episodes, so you always make a point to watch and discuss it.  Since the user feedback module is through your remote control, your wife, a recent convert to the show, gives her feedback along with you.

Your ad experience is the same through all shows, and streams information and commercials based on your profile, and what you’ve requested.  Since you’re planning a trip to Italy in the summer, ads for luxury travel packages are common.

Before bed, you head to your computer to pay a few bills.  The system has identified a cheaper banking plan for you, and noted that you keep going over your mobile minutes, and suggests a better plan.  You click ‘accept’ and it deals with all the paperwork for you.  You check your account where you’ve been saving for a new boat, and read some suggestions from fellow bankers on how to save money faster.  One of the members is a chartered accountant, and makes a suggestion that will help you reach your goal a month earlier.  You contact him through the network to say thanks, and to set up an appointment for financial planning.

Before bed, you set your alarm and wakeup preferences, updating your status to “away,” and taking you off the grid until the next morning.

This was a bit of a thought exercise for me, but I don’t think that it’s a social media future that is too far off. In fact, most of this technology already exists, at least in some asynchronous form.  Here, the recurring themes are a single, unified social graph, ubiquitous access to that graph, integration across all platforms, location-aware services, and above all, non-intrusion.  From a marketing point of view, the ads were all served to an individual as information, not as a mass message.  As a result, they were accepted, and not filtered out.  Above all, the entire experience was unobtrusive and simply part of life, rather than another thing to do or website to check.

Social media has a long way to go before it’s a part of everyone’s life, but as the technology for mobile, entertainment and home computing continues to improve and become more connected, a future of social media as an enabling tool in our daily lives, and as a means of connecting in real life is very likely.