In a few hours I’ll be doing a session at SXSW ‘08 called The Futurist’s Sandbox: Scenarios for Social Technologies in 2025, with my colleagues Wayne Pethrick, Jamais Casico, Stuart Candy and Jake Dunagan. As the title suggests, we’re presenting four “experiential” scenarios that explore how social technologies might evolve over the next few decades.  What are experential scenarios? They’re scenarios that engage the audience in the narrative of the future story; as such they’re much more interesting to tell (and watch) and give you a hands-on feel for what the future might look like, rather than a written story in which you’re left to imagine the details in your head. Since we have the last session of the conference and I fully intend to go directly from there to the nearest party, here’s a sneak peak at my scenario, called Can You See Me Now?

As information technologies continue to propagate the world, the electronic exhaust of our click stream is generating unprecedented amounts of metadata.  Rather than a useless by-product however, metadata is a valuable resource, an untapped gold mine of previously invisible patterns, intentions and relationships.  How can we recycle and repurpose metadata to expose the hidden layers of connections between people, objects and environments? In the future will we use metadata judiciously, or will we create a world of information obesity?  How will social technolgies instantiate themselves in a world scaffolded by metadata?  Maybe they’ll look something like this:

The Unauthorized Lifelog of Cory Doctorow, Volumes 1 - 6 (pre-release, March 2025)

Turn objects into Blogjects with DNA Markers, customizable with your DNA

The new bling: iCandy contact lens stream up to 5000 info channels directly to your eye

The Emotional Forecast

Protect yourself against anger mobs with Anger Away!

More notes on the session and descriptions of all the scenarios will be up soon.  Many, many thanks to Pinkergreen Design for creating the above future artifacts!

The clever folks at Botanicalls finally have an answer to the question burning up the blogosphere: is there anything in the world that can’t Twitter?  The answer apparently, is a resounding no, at least in the social sphere of houseplants and the humans with too much on their hands who care for them. Yes, just when you thought it was safe to leave the house, your plant calls looking for a little love:  

According the website, “Botanicalls Twitter answers the question: What’s up with your plant? It offers a connection to your leafy pal via online Twitter status updates that reach you anywhere in the world. When your plant needs water, it will Twitter to let you know… When people phone the plants, the plants orient callers to their habits and characteristics.”  

Uh-huh.

Out of curiosity, I call the listed Botanicalls phone number and punch in a 3-digit code from the menu.  #005 connects me to the Scented Geranium, which says in a sexy-pay-per-minute kind of voice that it’s a native of South Africa and “touching me will release my fabulous scent.”

I hang up, feeling kinda dirty.

What kind of world do we live in that requires we devote emotional energy to houseplants?  A world filled with the slippery slope of spime.  It starts with an emotionally needy plant, or a Nabaztag rabbit that just needs a hug.  Next thing you know you’re trying to broker a peace accord between the broom and the floor mop.

Ah, the glorious (future) world of spime.

Twittering plants and emotionally fragile Nabaztags have been on my mind this week as I’ve been writing a scenario for my upcoming SXSW talk that explores the relationship between social technologies and metadata.  In a world characterized by info-glut, how will social technologies help us navigate, control and leverage the mountains of metadata that surround us?  How will they help us when spime starts to spam?

Designers, for better or worse, are on the frontline as the physical and digital worlds collide. Their burden is to design responsibly, to resist the urge to propagate the world with more Useless Stuff Embedded with Useless Data. How can this be achieved? Minus a full-blown design manifesto (for now), I offer instead The First Rule of Spime Design, which says: Spime Shall Be Socially Useful. To determine whether the blogject meets this criteria, consider the QVC test: if it has the potential (even the most distant or remote) to one day appear on a QVC television special - then don’t make it.  Put the glue gun down and walk away. This is the Purple Ketchup rule, which is another way of saying: just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Because once houseplants start to Twitter, soon they just might Pownce.